


as my heart falls out of sight

by a_big_apple



Series: Benevolence [8]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Domestic, Found Family, M/M, Magic and Science, Multi, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2020-11-26 12:51:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20930525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_big_apple/pseuds/a_big_apple
Summary: Months after Story and Song, the dust still hasn’t settled—and neither has Taako. His house isn’t ready, he and Lup are out of sync, and Angus just keeps hanging around.A fic about bonds, family, and worst of all, beingvulnerable.





	1. Fall Break

**Author's Note:**

> Written for The Adventure Bang 2019! I'm listing this as part of a series because it does fall in that timeline, but you don't have to read the others to enjoy this one. 
> 
> I was lucky enough to be matched with three fantastic artists, [blu-art](http://blu-art.tumblr.com), [terezis](http://terezis.tumblr.com), and [divinelark](http://divinelark.tumblr.com), whose work will be featured throughout the story. Definitely follow the links back to their posts and tell them how awesome they are, and check out their other work!!
> 
> The whole story is written, and I'll be posting once(ish) a week. Each chapter will have warnings at the top, but I'll put them here too: there are a few scenes of graphic sex (Taakitz), Taako sometimes panics and/or has memory issues, and one instance of necromancy does not end well for an animal.
> 
> In Chapter One specifically: sex!

“Have you had a letter from Davenport lately?” Angus asks at breakfast, his first morning back on the moon for fall break. “Anything about when he’ll be visiting next?”

“Just a postcard a month ago,” Taako replies, gesturing to the icebox with his spatula, where a small collection of postcards has accumulated. “I think he’ll be back for Candlenights, but no news about a visit before then. Why?” 

Angus’ mouth twists to the side as he considers. “I want to do my end of year project on the bond engine. But Candlenights is a little late to get started...”

When Taako beckons, Angus brings his plate over to the stove and holds it out; Taako deposits a perfect toad in the hole and two sausages on it. “Well we were all on the ship for a hundred years, pumpkin. Maybe Lup and Barry could help you out. Or the Director, she’s a nerd.”

“Oh, I know,” Angus replies, looking up at him. He’s gotten a little taller, Taako suddenly notices—he doesn’t have to crane his head back quite as far to make eye contact. “But I thought Davenport would appreciate being asked.” 

Taako watches him retreat to the table with his breakfast, place set precisely with fork and knife and napkin and a glass of orange juice. It’s storybook-domestic, the kind that sometimes makes him feel like everything’s going to be okay, and sometimes makes him want to run as far and as fast as he can.

“You’ve got all of us sussed out, don’t you?” he murmurs, turning off the burner. Angus, already chewing on a piece of sausage, gives him a pleased look. 

“That’s how we do, sir.”

“It’s fuckin’ creepy,” Taako replies, slumping into his chair with his own breakfast: strawberry Fantasy Pop-Tarts, straight from the package. “But you can call Dav on my Stone, if you want.”

***

Taako was, briefly, the only occupant left in the Tres Horny Boys’ suite on the bottom of the fake moon. Magnus moved out as soon as his new place in Raven’s Roost had four walls and a roof; Merle got set up just as quickly in his tacky mansion in Bottlenose Cove with his kids. The quiet was nice, for a little while. Lup tried to convince him to switch to the empty room next to the one she was sharing with Barry—a few floors up, near Lucretia—and tried not to show she was hurt when he refused. 

As if proximity mattered that much, when she could float through a wall or a door in his suite at any hour, as up in his business as she’d ever been. It was a painful joy to have her back, to know what he’d been missing, but remembering a hundred years of living in each others’ pockets made him protective of the little bit of space he had. 

Alone in the quiet of his room, he could breathe. He could close his eyes and not think about anything; he could lay in bed and examine the hot coals of his memories gingerly, one by one, to keep from getting burned.

Then Angus showed up on his last Magic Day before leaving for Lucas’ school, a suitcase in his hand and two trunks floating behind him on a pretty impressive Levitate. “I’ll only be back on school breaks and in the summer,” he said, letting the trunks thump down in Merle’s old room without so much as a by-your-leave. “And I thought, why let my room sit empty for most of the year, when the Director could probably use it for something? You’ve got lots of space down here, more than enough for one quiet little boy!”

The craziest part was how Taako couldn’t bring himself to say no. His precious sister’s wheedling was nothing compared to the unrepentant grin of Angus McDonald, World’s Greatest Horseshit Detector. It was easier to just give in. They spent the last few days of the summer on magic lessons, unpacking all of Angus’ books and repacking one trunk for school, and watching the world put itself back together through the window in the living room floor.

He let Lucretia accompany Angus down to Neverwinter when the semester started; no way he was going to be trapped in a cannonball with her. And if Lup ever caught him standing in Angus’ room afterward, tracing the spines of the books or remaking the bed, she mercifully never let on.

***

He leaves Angus sitting at the kitchen table, a pencil in one hand and Taako’s Stone in the other, deep in conversation with Davenport. Kid’s got two pages full of notes already, and with this idea firmly in his teeth now, he’ll be occupied for hours.

Dressed in a froth of cozy knit layers and his best leaf-crunching boots, Taako rides a Featherfall down to Neverwinter with one hand on his hat. The city’s come a long way in a short time–cleanup crews have taken care of the rubble of destroyed property, making space for rebuilding to begin–and he angles himself toward the fenced-around construction site at the edge of the North end. It sits at the top of a hill, what used to be the seat of the corrupt Neverwinter Council until a Judge crushed the buildings there underfoot. Now, it’s the site of the future Taako’s Amazing School of Magic, and Ren is waving at him from the front door of the temporary construction office.

“Mornin’, boss!” she shouts when he’s close enough to hear. “Been waitin’ on you to lay the cornerstone.”

“I’m a busy elf.” He touches down next to her with a click of his boot heels.

Ren grins at him, a little sharper than she used to when she still thought he hung the moon. “Ain’t we all. But I guess not all of us have a kid home from school.”

Taako scowls, tucking his wand away. “He’s not _my_ kid.”

They make their way through the site, and as they go workers break away from their tasks to follow; they find themselves at the head of a small parade when they reach the construction manager, an enormous russet tiefling in dusty work clothes. 

Knack is talking on a Stone as the little crowd approaches, but they cut off the call to give Taako an unimpressed look. They always look completely unimpressed with Taako, which was one of the main reasons he hired them.

“We have a schedule for a reason, you know,” they say in greeting, giving Ren a more friendly nod.

Ren grins. “I tried to warn you.”

“Knack, my valuable time is at your disposal for the next…” Taako glances at the sky as if judging the hour by the sun. “...forty-seven minutes. Let’s get this show on the road!”

They scowl in a way Taako has come to interpret as “amused,” and gesture to the low wall of the foundation behind them. “I’ll lay the stone myself, just need you two to put whatever magic you’re gonna put in it as it settles.”

“You got it,” Taako says with two finger guns; next to him, Ren sighs.

An excited tension ripples through the assembled workers–who are eager to see one of the Seven Birds at work, Taako assumes–as he and Ren step closer to the wall. Knack hefts the cornerstone, at least three feet long and two feet thick, as if it weighs nothing at all; they lower it carefully as a halfling in a bright yellow helmet spreads mortar below. Taako and Ren each lay a hand on it as the stone and mortar meet, and Taako can feel the quiet pulse of Ren’s magic touching his. It always leaves a sugary taste on the back of his tongue, like the last bite of a cookie.

He didn’t offer his own help on the bond engine project, this morning when Angus asked, but he knows as much about it as any of them. Knows just how to drop his shoulders, to loosen the tight places in his chest, to feel that night in the Underdark and the first hour in Refuge and every day he’s known Ren since. He remembers how to make his bonds hum, and if it were any more public than this moment with Knack and twenty-odd onlookers it would be panic-inducing, but he breathes deep and shoves that feeling down into his diaphragm as his lungs expand.

There’s a murmur around them as bond filaments, whisper-thin and glowing, wind around the stone. The glow flares as Knack lets the weight of it settle, then starts to dissipate as they all lift their hands away. Once the bonds have faded from sight, it’s just a stone, unremarkable aside from the engraved date, but Ren is grinning like it’s more, and the assembled crowd claps. 

Taako feels unpleasantly naked, but he sweeps his hat from his head in a grandiose bow.

***

Afterward, Taako, Ren, and Knack reconvene in the construction office to discuss the latest architectural plans. It’s Taako’s design for the most part, the main school building and the dorms and a house for himself. Ren pushed and questioned and refined, and refused a house of her own, instead wedging an apartment onto the top floor of the school. Knack groused about the many impracticalities in the designs, but came up with ways to make nearly everything Taako and Ren wanted happen.

Of course, at every step of the process there are a hundred more factors to consider; for a large chunk of the meeting they nail down details on the interior of the main building–diversity of furnishings to accommodate as many races as possible, what equipment Taako wants in the dining hall kitchen and in the cooking classroom, whether all of the bathrooms should be all-gender or have some separated. 

It’s not until they move on to the schedule that Knack looks prepared for a fight. “Now, the main building will be ready to open for the start of spring semester, everything tested and cleaned up and pristine. But the dorms might not be prepped for move-in until a few weeks after, and your house a few weeks after that.”

“Ren already warned me,” Taako replies, “no need to be so tense. I get it. I’m working up a correspondence module for the kids who are planning to live in the dorms, so they can keep up with the commuters.”

“And you’re okay with your place taking longer?” Knack confirms, digging through a pile of parchments.

Taako waves a beatific hand. “I don’t want to live in a rush job, I can wait for perfection.”

Ren chuckles; Knack just looks like they swallowed a lemon. “Then take these home and look them over at your leisure,” they drawl, rolling up a series of parchments in their huge hands and passing them over. “I made some changes based on your last round of notes.”

“Will do, buckaroo.” Taako takes the roll of paper with a wink just because he knows it’ll make them scowl harder. It does; satisfied, he grins and gets to his feet. “Keep up the good work! Wednesday, same time, same place? Ren, I’ll see you for lunch tomorrow?”

Knack rises too, looking enormous in the small temp office. “A little earlier on Wednesday, if you can tear yourself away.” They nod at Ren, glare at Taako, and head out of the office toward the site.

“Lunch tomorrow,” Ren confirms as she starts clearing up the piles of papers on the table. “Give Angus a hug for me.”

“I’ll tell him you said hi,” Taako replies, striding for the door, but pulls up short. “Shit. Ren, lend me your Stone? I left mine with Ango.” She hands it over with a smile like she’s reading more into this situation than is necessary, so he spins away from her to use it. “Avi, my man, you there?”

“It’s my day off, bud,” comes a familiar voice over the stone. He sounds hung over. “If you just carried your Bracer—“

“My friend, amigo, buddy, just ring up whoever’s at the controls and have them send me a bubble down to the school, wouldja? I got things to do and my Levitates are not unlimited.”

Avi’s sigh rumbles across the line. “This is the last time.”

Avi says that every time. “Cards on Friday still? Angus is back for break, he wants in.”

“Sure, but we’re not betting real money with him, he cleans up every time. That kid’s got the best poker face I’ve ever seen.”

“Tell me about it,” Taako replies, and disconnects the line before the little surge of pride in his chest can creep into his voice. Then he tosses the Stone back over his shoulder. “Think fast!” 

Ren’s squawk of surprise is maybe the best thing he’s heard so far today.

***

He comes home to an extremely handsome reaper sitting on the couch in the common room, reading a book in the quiet suite. It’s a lovely surprise, and the smile Kravitz gives him in welcome is icing on the cake. “Productive meeting?”

“Natch,” Taako replies. He tosses his outer layers at the coat rack and his roll of parchment at the coffee table, neither checking nor caring if any of them made it, and climbs onto Kravitz’s lap to kiss him.

Kravitz lays his book aside and cups Taako’s face in his hand instead, smiling into the kiss. “I can’t wait to see the place all finished.”

“The house’s gonna be a little longer, but it’ll be worth the wait when you see that master bedroom,” Taako murmurs, just to make Kravitz blush. 

He does, and laughs, and kisses Taako again. “There’s no rush. You have a perfectly good bedroom here.”

“Yeah, we should make use of it while we can,” Taako agrees, wriggling closer. “Where’s Angus?”

“Upstairs with Barry, working on his project.”

Taako grins. “Hell yeah. Take me away, Bone Daddy, they’ll be at it for literal hours.”

They shuffle to Taako’s room, pressed together and kissing their way across the short distance, and when the door’s closed and locked behind them Taako breaks away to start pulling more layers off. He’s now regretting his carefully assembled crazy quilt look.

Kravitz can clearly sense it, and chuckles, guiding Taako back onto the messy bed by the shoulders. “Let me.”

Taako huffs, feeling a flush rise on the tips of his ears. “Yeah, sure, go for it.”

***

Kravitz takes his time. Undresses him slow, kisses all the hidden bits of his skin, opens him up with intense focus and fucks him in long, torturous strokes. When he pulls out before either of them has come yet, Taako whines and almost rips a hole in the mussed comforter with his fingernails. “Mother_fucker_,” he says, feelingly, as Kravitz settles back between his knees with a hand lightly stroking his own cock, watching Taako squirm. “Krav—”

“You said we had literal hours,” his infuriating boyfriend replies, sounding breathless even though he doesn’t need to breathe. He jerks himself a little faster, his other hand on Taako, stroking his belly and his balls and dipping into his tragically empty ass. His boyfriend is the worst, the literal worst, but fuck is it ever hot to watch him bring himself off.

“I hate you,” Taako says, adoringly, his cock twitching like mad. “You’re the worst boyfriend in the planar system.” Kravitz bites his lip and comes with a low groan, and Taako almost comes too just from the look on his face. “I wanna come sometime today, you kinky bastard.”

The only reply he gets is a laugh and sticky hands on his thighs, pressing them open wider as Kravitz lowers his mouth, fucking finally, to Taako’s cock. Taako lets his head fall back in relief; his heart pounds at Kravitz’ sloppy tongue, the little hints of teeth, but he’s still taking his goddamn time. When Taako squirms and tries to thrust up faster, he gets Krav’s arms across his belly and hips to hold him down. He groans out his frustration and then falls silent, just breathing, mesmerized despite his griping as Kravitz ratchets his pleasure higher inch by inch.

And then he hears his _fucking_ sister in the living room. 

“Taako!” she yells, and he jerks, knocking Kravitz in the head with his knee.

“Busy!” he shouts back; on impulse he throws the blanket over Krav and himself, just his face sticking out, and it’s a damn good thing he does. Lup floats right through the wall, just her tattered red robe and a whole lotta creepy nothing where her face should be.

“Busy busy, or getting busy?” she asks, because he has zero privacy, he’ll actually talk to Lucretia if it means finding out how to make a lich ward for his room.

He covers his face; under the comforter, Krav has gone very still, but huffs a tiny laugh with his mouth still around Taako’s cock. “Lup. _Get out._”

“Barry and Angus have been upstairs working all day, you need to make them some dinner so they’ll take a fucking break,” she says. “Hey Krav.”

_“Lup!”_

“Yeah, yeah, like you didn’t have a seventeen-year bet going with Magnus about who could interrupt me and Barry the most. If you’re not in the kitchen in fifteen minutes I’m coming back.”

She drifts out again as easily as she drifted in, and Taako pulls the blanket the rest of the way up over his head to muffle his frustrated scream.

Kravitz’ mouth is warm in a way that means he’s blushing, but he laughs again and goes back to his task with new gusto; in barely a minute, Taako doesn’t even remember what he was angry about.

***

Finally satisfied, Taako cleans up and puts all his layers back on–the knee socks and the soft green trousers, the undershirt and mauve button-up tunic and the maroon sweater with the shimmery leaves on the shoulders that make him look a little squarer, even a fresh glamour for his face–and leaves a laughing Kravitz lounging in his bed. He’s met by the vaguest suggestion of his sister’s smirking face in the kitchen. “Oh good. All done?”

“You’re the literal worst.”

“I’m a literal ghost, my only comfort in unlife is cockblocking and embarrassing you.”

“I hate you. What do they want for dinner.”

Lup shrugs. “I couldn’t get them to stop working long enough to decide. You know, Angus is really focused for a kid.”

“Yeah,” Taako replies, opening the icebox to consider the options, “he’s a nerd for sure.”

“Did he even eat lunch?”

“Who knows?” Taako pulls out some tomatoes and onions and carrots, and the kielbasa he got from that new butcher down the hill from the school site. “Get me some beans, out of the cabinet there? Oh, and the garlic.”

A few cabinets open and shut behind him, and the items he asked for appear on the table. Lup’s glowing Mage Hand lingers in the corner of his eye. “What do you mean, who knows? Aren’t you supposed to be looking after him?”

“He’s not my kid,” Taako replies absently, getting down the big pot and setting it under the tap. “He’s my roommate. He knows how to feed himself.”

“Taako, he’s ten.”

“Eleven.”

“A baby. He should have more than just a roommate who doesn’t notice if he eats or not.”

Taako finally turns to face her; he wishes he could see her expression. “What do you want from me? I made him breakfast before I left this morning, I’m making dinner, I let him use my Stone to work on his homework. If he wanted a dad, he could’ve moved to Raven’s Roost. At least help me if you’re gonna nag, and prep the beans.”

Lup doesn’t reply right away, just moves her Mage Hand to do as he asked. They work through the heavy silence, almost in sync but not quite, until the cassoulet is simmering and there’s nothing to do but wait. 

“Does Angus know that?” Lup finally asks as Taako cleans the dishes with a spell. 

“Know what?”

“That he should look somewhere else, if he’s looking for a dad.”

Taako turns to her in disbelief. “Are you kidding? In what planar system am I, Taako from TV and your brother you have known your entire life, _dad material?_ Angus isn’t stupid, he knows what’s up.”

Lup hovers over the pot, surrounding it with her incorporeal form. The lid rattles with steam as she Prestidigitates it. She’s always too impatient to wait for a slow cook dish. “I think Angus knows what’s up better than you do,” she mutters, then floats upward into the ceiling. “I’ll go get them.”

“I hate that cryptic lich shit!” Taako shouts after her, but he can’t tell if she heard; instead he satisfies himself slamming cabinets and drawers open to get out table settings.

***

Eventually Kravitz reappears, dress shirt buttoned up to the neck and looking bashful again, and Barry and Angus are herded away from their work. They’ve just sat down to eat, Lup hovering longingly, when the suite door crashes open. 

“Smells great!” comes a booming voice from beyond the kitchen door. “Got room for one more?”

“Magnus!” Angus shouts, leaping from his place and racing to meet him; from the hallway Taako hears them laughing, and a squeal that means Angus is being hung upside-down or manhandled over a meaty shoulder. 

“_One_ more?” Taako calls. “We’d need enough for _three_ more to feed you.” But he gets up to fetch another bowl and spoon from the cabinet, and a cider from the icebox. 

Magnus appears in the doorway with a bakery box in his hand and Angus, giggling, draped over his elbow. “I heard a certain someone was visiting from school, had to come by and say hi!”

“Well, the moonbase is still my permanent address, so really when I go to school I’m just visiting there,” Angus says, somehow making even pedantry seem cute as Magnus sets him back in his chair.

Taako dishes out Magnus’ food. “Hell yeah, because when my school’s finished, you won’t need to go to that inferior one anymore.”

“We’ll see,” Angus replies with a grin.

A dinner with Magnus will always be louder and more boisterous than a dinner without; he jokes with Barry and Lup, teases Kravitz about his overly formal suit, asks Angus a million questions about school, even raves about Taako’s cooking genuinely as if he hasn’t raved about hundreds of meals before it. The familiarity of it is soothing. Taako can put the weird tension with Lup out of his mind entirely and let the conversation flow around him.

When everyone corporeal has had their fill, Magnus slides the bakery box to the center of the table. “New place popped up right near me, I made a sign for their door and they paid me in pies. Figured you’d want to try it and tell me how you’d do it better.” He grins; Taako just raises an eyebrow and opens the box. He’s struck immediately by the crust, a carefully arranged assembly of individual leaves, all golden brown and sparkling with sugar. Little hints of purplish berry filling have bubbled through the gaps.

“Blueberry?” he asks, unsure; it doesn’t quite smell like a blueberry pie.

“Huckleberry!” Magnus proclaims, delighted. “They grow wild all over.”

Barry laughs. “You really do live country out there, don’t you? That looks amazing.”

“We’ll taste it and see,” Taako says, trying not to show he’s impressed. “Ango, get some plates and forks?”

Angus, always a step ahead, is already half out of his chair. He fetches a knife first, and Taako slices into the pie smooth and easy with a pleased hum for the crack of the crust. 

Hovering over his shoulder now, Lup moans. “I _fucking love pie._” 

“Not long now, honey,” Barry reassures her as Taako serves up a slice for everyone who can eat it. 

“When do you think it’ll be ready?” Magnus asks Barry with a forkful of pie in his mouth. “In time for Candlenights?”

Barry grins. “Oh, definitely!” Then he looks over at Lup and Taako apologetically. “Probably not for your birthday, though.”

This isn’t news to Taako–he’s been grilling Barry about the same question. He waves a hand magnanimously. “We’ll figure something out.” Then he takes a modest bite of the pie, and has to pause. It’s...about as close to perfect as he can imagine. The crust is flaky and melts on his tongue; the filling is sweet with brown sugar and tart with lemon zest, and most of all the flavor of fresh wild berries bursts on his tongue. For half a second, he’s curled up in a hand-dug warren in the woods in the stifling heat of August, fingers stained with berry juice. There’s a solid warmth nestled into his side, and he remembers it’s Lup even though he can’t picture her face, their face, when they were forty.

“That good, huh?” Kravitz asks in his ear, snapping Taako back to the present. When he focuses, everyone is looking at him; whether they’re waiting for him to get out of his head or waiting for his opinion on the pie, he can’t tell.

“It’s passable,” he says, and Magnus laughs delightedly. Next to him, Angus hums around a mouthful, closing his eyes. 

“I’ve never had huckleberries before,” he says with his mouth full. 

Magnus pats Angus’ head like he’s a particularly cute dog. “You can come out and have pie with me anytime you like,” he says. “I’ve been working on the bedrooms all week, actually. When you have time, you can come by and pick out which one’ll be yours.”

Angus swallows, looking up at Magnus with something like surprise in his face. Then, for some stupid reason, he looks over at Taako–at which point Taako realizes he’s paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. He forces himself to continue, and the kid looks back to Magnus with the start of a smile. “Really?”

“Really. You’ll have a place there, anytime you want it,” Magnus tells him. There’s a softness in his face Taako remembers, a softness he probably hasn’t seen in more than a decade. There’s a tingly cold at Taako’s elbow, and he glances over; Lup’s spectral hand is on his arm. He raises an eyebrow; _see?_ it says. Lup concentrates her ghost fingers enough to pinch him.

***

They all buzz off eventually–Magnus to drop in on Lucretia, Lup and Barry to their suite upstairs, and Angus to the living room to get back to his project. At least Kravitz hangs around to help him clean up, and give him a few soft, huckleberry-stained kisses over the soapy dishes. It takes a bit longer to wash them than it would without a handsome distraction, but Taako’s not complaining; when the kitchen is spotless again at last, Kravitz pours himself a glass of sherry and Taako a glass of wine before they adjourn to the living room.

Angus’ notebooks and pencil case have been shifted to the floor. Instead, he’s spread out the plans Taako tossed aside earlier across the width of the coffee table. “Is this your house?” he asks, looking up as Taako and Kravitz walk in. “It’s bigger on the inside! Is it like the Pocket Spa?”

“Oh, new plans?” Kravitz murmurs, and sits on the edge of the couch to better see the parchment in question.

Taako folds into an easy chair with a sigh, resigning himself to a round of questions. Krav has seen the designs from the early stages, but it’ll all be new to Angus. “Yep, that’s the latest, but it’s not quite a pocket dimension. Too risky in the long term. It’s more like Enlarge, but just the space inside the walls.”

Angus’ eyes widen behind his glasses. “That’s impressive magic, sir.”

“No shit,” Taako replies, swirling his wine and taking a sip. “How many times do I have to tell you, I’m the greatest fucking Transmutation wizard ever.”

Kravitz leans closer, pointing. “This is the front of the house, facing the campus, for school business and events and things. Right?” He glances over at Taako, who nods.

“A couple of guest rooms too, for donors and shit. I’m not footing the bills for this place forever.”

“I thought Ren was footing the bills,” Angus says with a guileless smile.

Kravitz coughs out a laugh; Taako takes a swig of his wine. “Beside the point.”

“Yes, well. Then this back here, this is the private wing.” Kravitz gestures, and Angus follows with his finger, tracing over the open-plan kitchen and dining area, the living room, the hallway dotted with little offshoot rooms. 

“Anticipating a lot of guests, sir?” Angus asks with a little smile.

“I’m irresistible.”

“They’re not all bedrooms,” Kravitz points out, ignoring him. “There’s a library, a music room. An arcana lab.”

Taako waves a lazy hand. “Naw, we moved the lab to the basement next to the cold room. Safer that way.”

“Ah, I see,” Kravitz murmurs, tapping the basement level inset, and then above it. “And here’s the second floor.”

Angus pushes his glasses up his nose, leans in further. “Two master bedrooms?”

“One for me ‘n Krav,” Taako says, finally leaning in to point them out, “one for Lup and Barry. Whenever they want it. I gave us a connected dressing room. We used to talk about that when we were teenagers, a closet bigger than any of the shitty rooms we rented, full of every pretty thing we couldn’t afford to buy.” He sits back again, swirling the last of the wine his glass. “I mean, if she wants it still. I dunno what their plans are.”

Kravitz and Angus are both looking at him like he’s said something unexpectedly tragic; Krav reaches over to squeeze his knee. “I’m sure she’ll love it,” he says. “I’m sure she remembers.”

“Yeah,” Taako replies; it comes out oddly croaky, and he drains his glass to clear his throat.

Angus shifts his focus back to the plans. “What’s this room? Next to Lup and Barry?”

“I haven’t decided,” Taako says, glancing at it. “Maybe a study. We can do work at home like old businesspeople.”

“Domestic bliss,” Kravitz agrees with a wry smile. “Grading and death paperwork.”

“Is there room for me?”

Taako blinks at Angus, who’s watching him now with a carefully blank expression. Somehow it’s the opposite of the cautious smile he’d given Magnus, at the mention of a room in Raven’s Roost. It makes Taako want to squirm; instead he casually crosses his legs. “Of course, little man,” he says, with an expansive gesture at the parchment. “You said yourself, lots of guest rooms.”

Angus looks down again, traces the first floor hallway with a fingertip. Then he gets up from the table, gathering up his notebooks and pencils. “I think I’ll work on my project in my room for a while,” he murmurs, eyes still on the table. “Goodnight sir. Goodnight, Mr. Kravitz.” 

“Goodnight Angus,” Kravitz replies when Taako takes a beat too long. “Sleep well.”

With a little nod, the kid spins on his heel and retreats to his room, shutting the door behind him. Taako stares after him, bewildered. _What the fuck?_

“Taako,” Kravitz says, gentle, the way he talks when Taako’s brain statics out. “I’ve grown quite fond of Angus.”

“Sure,” Taako says, dragging his eyes from Angus’ closed door to Kravitz’ face. “He likes you too, babe.”

Kravitz takes Taako’s hand in both of his, kissing his knuckles. “Of course, it’s your decision, it is your house—”

“Our house,” Taako interrupts, blinking. He leans in a little, lacing their fingers together. “I mean. It can be our house. That fuckin’ music room isn’t for me, you know.”

Kravitz kisses him on the mouth, tender. “Our house, then,” he murmurs, a dopey little smile on his face. “For as long as you’ll have me.”

“Stupid.” Taako laughs, disbelieving, and pulls Kravitz in by his collar to kiss him harder. “You’re so fuckin’ stupid.” When he tugs again his boyfriend obeys, stumbling over the corner of the table to perch awkwardly on Taako’s lap. By the time they untangle themselves from the chair and stumble to the bedroom, floorplans are the furthest thing from his mind.

***

Having a body construct that functions in bed means that Kravitz functions _all_ the ways one can in bed; when they snuggle under the covers together, sweaty and satisfied, he falls asleep almost immediately. Taako closes his eyes, listens for a while to Krav’s soft breathing–he doesn’t need to breathe, but it’s become a habit now–and nothing happens. 

When he gets tired of the darkness Taako wrenches his eyes open, watching Kravitz sleep in the gray tones of darkvision, looking around at the shadows of the room. He turns over and reaches for his Stone, reading old texts and playing a stupid, repetitive game. He closes his eyes again, because he’s _tired_, but it doesn’t do any good. Even meditation seems far away; he couldn’t identify a single thought in his head, but it’s still _spinning_, whirring like a beleaguered washing machine. 

He thinks about the plans for the house, tries to reassemble the picture from memory. He thinks about tiny details that don’t matter at two in the morning, wants to write them down but that would mean getting up and admitting defeat. He imagines showing the plans to Lup, showing her the room he’s made for her, tries to imagine what he’ll do if she says she and Barry want to have their own place now. He’s doing it to her, isn’t he? Keeping to his own room, his own suite, when she asked him in closer? But he can’t imagine it being this way forever. He doesn’t want to call anywhere home that doesn’t have her in it, not ever again.

Eventually he gives up; it’s clear sleep isn’t coming. He slides out of bed and into a robe and wanders into the living room, where the plans are still unrolled on the table. There’s no light under Angus’ door, which is almost surprising; maybe keeping regular hours at school has trained him into better sleep habits. As if Taako knows anything about good sleep habits.

He sits on the couch to look at the plans again, though he’s been over them a hundred times by now. The library’s a generous size; if he only lines three of the walls with bookshelves, it could double as a special guest room for Angus. Something a little more purposeful, something to make him feel welcome whenever he wants to be there. If Taako really does hire him, when he’s done with school, he could even have one of the apartments in the faculty building all to himself.

Finally his eyes are too hazy to keep open much longer; he rolls the parchment up again, brings it back to his room and sets it on the desk. Kravitz has stretched an arm across the empty space Taako left, his face smushed into the pillow; blearily, Taako wriggles back into his spot and tucks his face into Krav’s shoulder until sleep overtakes him.

In the morning, Taako and Kravitz and Angus have breakfast as usual, like nothing’s wrong, but _something’s_ wrong. Angus goes back to school at the end of the week, his expression fake and careful, and doesn’t mention the blueprints again.


	2. Pumpkindaze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up: there's some mid-argument panic in this one.
> 
> On a happier note, the beautiful art in this chapter is by [divinelark](https://divinelark.tumblr.com)!

As predicted, Lup’s new body isn’t ready in time for their birthday. He tries not to show it, but Taako’s disappointed that he can’t get smashed with his sister on their first birthday back together in a decade; maybe, if they could both just get pleasantly fucked up with food and booze for a bit, they’d come out of it more in sync.

“So let’s go somewhere instead,” Lup says, curled up next to him on the couch in the THB suite. Or, as curled up and as next to him as she can get when she’s incorporeal and sometimes actually passes through him. “See something new. I asked Luce, she said we can use the cannonballs.”

“You don’t have to ask permission,” Taako says, sour. “We saved the fucking world. Also we live here, and _also_, Krav can scythe us wherever.”

Lup overlaps her shoulder with his, a creepy nudge that leaves a little chill behind. “Anywhere. Where do you want to go? What’s Taako’s Best Day?”

“That’ll be the day your body’s ready,” he says without hesitation, and Lup’s form flares a little with emotion. 

“You dingus,” she says, a smile in her voice. “Second best day, then.”

He considers for a while, and they sink into an easy silence. The window in the floor is still covered with a rug, but he knows that down below autumn is well underway, the leaves turning and the harvest coming in. “There was this really good Pumpkindaze festival in New Greenhold,” he says after a while. “I did a show there once. There were other entertainers, and music and games and stuff. And a big scarecrow decorating contest.”

“Were there pies?” Lup asks longingly. “Was there good beer?”

“Well, I wasn’t gonna mention it.”

She overlaps with his side again in her excitement. “Please eat everything and tell me about it, I’ll make a list for next year.”

“Can you even hold a pen?” he teases. 

“A _mental_ list.”

***

With their plans settled, all that’s left is to come up with a present. They don’t always exchange gifts–for most of their lives, their belongings were both meager and shared anyway–but this is a year to commemorate. Her incorporeality eliminates a lot in this arena too, unfortunately; he’s saving a stash of new clothes and old favorite recipes for her re-embodying, and she can’t get much use out of other material goods right now. He settles instead on the least appealing and therefore most meaningful gift: doing something _nice_.

There’s plenty of good to be done in Neverwinter and everywhere else the Hunger destroyed. He’s been considering his school contribution enough to the rebuilding of the local community, but he could dive in a little bit more. Maybe he could throw some money at something cool, and name it after Lup. She’d like that. She may be a better person than him, but she’s equally as vain. 

This idea takes root as he goes about his daily life, and he warms to it quickly, until he realizes the main stumbling block: to find out where his monetary help might be needed, he has to talk to the head of the rebuilding efforts. _Lucretia_.

***

Lucretia has a personal assistant these days, a half-elf from Rockport. Taako knows about the assistant before he ventures up to the Director’s office; he heard about him from Angus, who did the background check when Bradson hired him. Taako likes the idea of a buffer; he can leave Lucretia a message, let her go to voicemail when she calls back with an answer, won’t have to actually stand in her presence and feel all over again the first minute he remembered Lup and thought she was lost.

Of course, nothing with Lucretia ever goes quite the way Taako wants it to. 

As soon as Taako gets off the elevator, the personal assistant–Gavin, he recalls–spots him from down the hall. Gavin clearly recognizes him; he gets up from his desk immediately, unfolding to a surprising height. He’s chubby and smartly dressed, brown-skinned and pleasant-faced; his smile _looks_ like he’s somebody’s assistant, customer service with a little bit of awestruck eagerness thrown in. Before Taako’s even halfway down the hall Gavin is knocking on the Director’s door, then poking his head in.

“Mr. Taaco’s here to see you,” he hears faintly, and a murmur in reply. Then Gavin’s striding down the hallway to meet him, hand extended. “I’m Gavin, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Taaco! You can go right in, the Director said when I started that any of the Starblaster crew could have a meeting anytime they like.”

This overt friendliness and the idea of actually stepping into the Director’s office combined are almost enough to make him turn right around and leave again. Instead he lets his face go cool, waving a hand as he walks by. “Hail and well met and all that,” he says, as if his heart isn’t suddenly racing. “I’d love some coffee when you get a chance, Gervin. Black, four sugars.”

The door to the office is still standing open, and the Director is sitting at her desk, scribbling away like always. Taako hasn’t been in here since before he got his memories back; the restored painting hanging behind her is a shock. He remembers it as it was the day she unveiled it; he remembers it altered, disguised. Painted Lucretia, young and shy, like an echo of the lined face that looks up at him as he enters. It’s almost enough to static him out; he grips the doorframe hard for a moment, letting the edge of the wood molding press into his palm.

“Sit down, if you like,” the Director says with a ghost of a smile. “What can I do for you?”

He doesn’t want to sit down. He doesn’t want her to know that he doesn’t want to sit down. If this was a business meeting with a stranger, he would sit down; he’s had some of those now, because of the school. That’s what he wants this to be—a business meeting with a stranger. He sits down.

[ ](https://divinelark.tumblr.com/post/188289411826/image-description-a-digital-painting-of)

“I want to sponsor a project,” he says, forcing his shoulders to relax and his ears to lay at a carefully neutral angle. “Something that needs rebuilding. Something with naming rights.”

If she’s fazed, she doesn’t show it. Instead she sets her pen down, twists in her chair to pull a notebook off a shelf. Taako still doesn’t know how she distinguishes between any of the half a million notebooks always surrounding her; none of them are ever labeled.

“Will this be associated with your school?”

“No. Just a one time donation thing.”

The Director looks at him, keen and considering, then pages through her book. “The Sisters of the Merciful Mother have put in a bid to build a group home for orphans of the Hunger. They need funding for materials, estimated 350,000 gold.”

Taako’s gut twists; it’s the most obvious suggestion she could have made, clearly chosen to have maximum pull on his deeply-buried heartstrings and his slightly less buried sense of guilt. He hates how easy it was for her to pull that out of a list. He hates how quickly he wants to say yes. “What am I, Fantasy Daddy Warbucks?” he says instead.

Lucretia looks at him again, some of the careful distance gone from her face. “The most urgently needed proposals get the most urgent work, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Yes, okay, fine,” he snaps, getting to his feet. “That one’s fine.”

“I’ll have the paperwork drawn up.” She says it like the Director, businesslike, but now that she’s let down her guard a little he can see all the cracks where Lucretia shows through; it’s in her expression, in the uncertain set of her mouth and the way she looks at him like she knows his mind. _He _doesn’t even know his mind. It’s infuriating. 

Then there’s a knock, and the door opens a crack to reveal Gavin’s annoyingly pleasant face. He holds out a steaming BOB logo mug. “I’ve brought your coffee, Mr. Taaco.” 

“Too slow, my man!” Taako plasters his paparazzi smile back on. “Got places to be.” He pulls the door the rest of the way open and sweeps out without looking back.

***

The thing about being celebrities on every plane of existence is that no town is small enough to go incognito in. Especially when one of you is Taako ™ From TV and the other is Lup in spooky lich form. At least the people of New Greenhold seem to have more chill than Neverwinterans; they do double takes as the twins walk through their festival, but then they go back to the business of selling pies and judging carved pumpkins and falling all over themselves in three-legged races. 

Taako buys Kravitz some hair beads that look like ripe cranberries and charms shaped like delicate oak leaves. Lup buys a handmade denim wallet, and has the maker monogram it BJB. They fill shopping bags with pies and late-season corn and bottles of local cider, and Taako eats every street pastry Lup asks him to and drinks an irresponsible amount of beer. They wander through the scarecrow display, delighted to find that most of them are effigies of the Starblaster crew; inevitably it becomes a contest that Magnus wins in number and Barry wins in best likeness. 

“We’re not going to tell them though, right?” Taako asks, considering the scarecrow version of himself with the biggest hat. 

“Hell no,” Lup replies. “We’ll tell them we tied for both.”

Taako holds up a palm and Lup swipes her spectral hand through his, making him shiver. The sun is starting to dip down below the horizon; soon it’ll be colder and, if he remembers correctly, rowdier out among the festival tents. “Let’s get dinner.”

“Babe, you’ve been eating all day.”

“There was this pub, when I did my show here...it was good. They were good people. I want to see if it’s still there. They had the best fucking Gnomish pickle soup.”

“As good as Dav’s?”

“I...I dunno.”

Lup’s quiet for a moment, and he can feel her eyes on him. Her spectral, metaphorical eyes, but it feels the same. He used to feel that look through the back of his head, and know she could see what he was thinking; he _wants_ her to see him, but he suddenly feels impenetrable.

“Let’s go find out, then.” She nudges him with her overburdened Mage Hand, all the bags they’ve accumulated smacking into his side. It’s the closest to a shoulder-hip-bump he’s going to get, and he laughs and fights down the urge to wrap his arm around the parcels in lieu of her waist. 

“Come on, goofus, this way.”

***

The Ham and Pickle is still where Taako remembers, down the main road through town past the festival beer tent. It looks the same: maybe a fresh coat of paint on the sign, different flowers in the window boxes, but mostly as if no time has passed since Taako toured here eight years ago. The inside looks the same too, and is empty thanks to the festivities outside. They seat themselves—or, Taako does, Lup hovers a little ominously—at a back corner booth with a stained glass lamp hanging over the table. 

Then commences a familiar scurry that happens to Taako in every restaurant since the Story: staff murmuring to each other, gesturing, shaking their heads or nodding. One server retreats to a back room. When the door swings open again a gnome in tweed pants and vest strides out, grinning from behind an impressive moustache. 

“Taako! Back again at last. If you’ve come for some more of my grandmother’s pickle soup, I’m your man.” He thrusts out a hand. “I go by Thorpe, these days.”

“Thorpe,” Taako says, trying out this name in his mouth and finding it fitting. “Nice choice! I like the ‘stache.”

Thorpe chuckles, face scrunching up. “All the rage in gnome communities now, I hear, thanks to your Captain. And you must be Lup,” he says, turning, seeming unfazed by the billowing red hood and blank darkness inside it. “It’s an honor.”

Lup holds out a Mage Hand to shake, and Taako can tell by her voice that she’s as charmed as he expected she’d be. “The honor is mine! I’ve been hearing from my brother about this pickle soup. Wish I could try it, but. Temporarily incorporeal.”

Thorpe shrugs ruefully. “I suppose you’ll have to come back again, when you’ve got that sorted out.” Then he turns to Taako, pointing a finger. “I believe you had a gin fizz last time, you want another?”

“Gin fizz?” Lup echoes, surprise in her voice.

Taako gives Thorpe a lazy finger gun. “Perfect.” Thorpe strides off again, murmuring instructions to the human woman behind the bar and the half-elf server who would’ve otherwise been waiting on their table, and Taako turns back to his sister. “I can’t believe he remembers my drink from _eight years ago_. That’s a fuckin’ skill right there.”

“You don’t _like_ gin,” Lup replies, quiet and confused.

Taako feels his ears sink without conscious input, makes an effort to pick them up again. “I like the texture. And it’s got protein! Just tastes like gogurt anyway, so…”

“Like _what_?” Lup replies, recoiling a little, and Taako grimaces.

“Oh...I fucked up a transmutation, like, my second Sizzle show. Everything I drink tastes like key lime gogurt. I guess I didn’t tell you that?”

“No,” she says faintly. “Can’t you...fix it?”

He blinks at her. “I guess I probably could now. I just...got used to it?”

“But you’ve been drinking beer all day and telling me what was good!”

“I can tell what’s _good_,” he replies, offended. “It’s like...colorblind people can still tell the difference between light and dark, right?. Not every drink tastes like the _same_ key lime gogurt, some are good and some are bad.” As the bartender approaches with his drink in hand, he gestures. “And some are fizzy.”

Lup is quiet as he accepts his drink and takes a swig. He does like the fizz and the froth of it, the way it prickles down his throat, but he’s extra conscious now of the citrus flavor. The silence at the table is uncomfortable, suddenly; he can guess what she’s thinking from the way her form flickers and her phantom shoulders are drawn upward with tension. _I used to know everything about you_, she doesn’t say. _I used to know you._ He wants to tell her everything she’s missed, wants to lay out all the puzzle pieces of his heart and brain and let her help him piece them back together. 

The other part of him curls inward like an autumn leaf, protecting itself from the cold that’s surely coming; he’s still waiting, always waiting, for another shoe to drop.

Finally Lup breaks the silence. “He reminds me of Dav,” she says as her shape forcibly relaxes.

“Yeah. I think maybe that’s why I liked it here the first time.”

***

Comfortingly, the soup is as he remembers it: thick and creamy, salty, with generous chunks potatoes and carrots and pickles and the in-house smoked ham that gave the pub its name. Daveport’s pickle soup had leeks in it, Taako now remembers, more allspice and no meat, but this version is close enough to taste like home. Lup leans across the table, peering into the bowl and humming longingly over the plate of pierogi beside it. “We _have_ to come back here.”

“We will.”

“So is it as good as Dav’s? Or does soup taste like key lime gogurt too?”

Taako snorts. “Soup is not a beverage. This has a different flavor profile...the smoked ham really adds some heft, but I think Dav got as much flavor out of seasonings.”

“He used hambones to make the stock, didn’t he?”

“Did he?” He remembers the Captain cooking, a few times. Holidays, special occasions. The kitchen wasn’t built for gnome height, so Taako or Lup always helped, in the guise of learning. It wasn’t a lie, they _did_ learn; cabbage rolls for Merle’s birthday, apple cake and gingerbread at Candlenights. Ham stock makes sense, but he can’t picture it or find the taste-memory on his tongue. 

He _does_ remember the soup eight years ago, and Thorpe by another name, and the restful, safe feeling he had here. Over the course of one dinner his show plan changed–the next day he scrapped his duck l’orange and made goulash with fresh pumpkin and apple. It was a hit. Of course it was a hit, and when the audience lined up for samples, there was one broad young man with a starry-eyed expression who Taako was sure he’d seen at the last two stops.

Then an itchy chill touches his fingers, and he blinks to find Lup’s spectral hands sharing space with his. “Taako?”

“Yeah. Yes. Let’s make this, next time he’s docked in Neverwinter.”

“Absolutely.”

Later, after coffee and gingerbread cookies, Thorpe waves them away from the cash register. “It’s on the house. Just promise you won’t wait eight more years before you visit again.”

“Oh, believe me, we’ll be back. Maybe we’ll bring Davenport next time,” Lup assures him, and Thorpe’s grin widens. 

“I’ll hold you to it.”

***

It’s fully dark when they emerge, but music is still ringing out from the makeshift stage and there’s brisk business being done at the beer tent. In silent agreement they walk back along the main drag, through the evening revelers and toward the edge of town. 

“Listen,” Taako says at last, “I don’t want to be a bummer on our birthday, but...there’s something I want to go see.”

Lup’s form flares a little next to him. “I was wondering why it’s _New_ Greenhold. What happened to _old_ Greenhold?” The thread of weariness in her voice makes Taako ache.

“The Oculus. Somebody made a tiny black hole, swallowed the entire town.”

“I don’t remember that one.”

With a little sway to the side, he touches her incorporeal shoulder with his own. “It was while you were gone.”

“Well,” she replies, “the least we can do is take a look.”

In a more solemn mood they make their way beyond the town, across the well-traveled road that passes it by, and down a path overgrown by the encroaching woods. Lup’s phantasmal glow is plenty of light for two elves to navigate by, and soon the trees begin to thin out; then suddenly the forest is interrupted by the cliff-edge of an enormous crater. 

[ ](https://divinelark.tumblr.com/post/188289535291/image-description-a-digital-painting-from-taz)

It’s spooky in the dark, and wider than Taako can process at a single glance, the vastness of it stopping him short. Beside him, Lup has gone still as well. “Fuck,” she says softly. “That’s got to be more than a mile across.”

“At least,” Taako agrees. They stare in silence, taking it in. The crater isn’t totally empty, at least–not like the circles of glass the Gauntlet left behind. It’s just blasted out earth, cracked over time and muddied by rainwater. Patches of moss and clover and other forest groundcover are spreading down from its rim, and seeds dropped by birds or blown by wind have sprouted into shrubs and saplings haphazardly in the basin. At the center, the lowest point, Taako can barely make out a muddy pond of accumulated water from the latest rainfall and the green of plant life springing up around its edges. It’s better, somehow, that life is bouncing back here; better knowing that it’s over and the Relics can’t do any more damage. 

With a sigh, Lup sinks to the ground in an approximation of sitting. “I have a present for you.”

Taako folds himself down beside her. “Ditto. You go first.”

She makes a grabby hand at him. “Get out my purse?”

He fishes out the little red leather bag she’d asked him to carry for her this morning; it’s much lighter now than when they started. With a dextrous Mage Hand she tugs it open and pulls out a tiny rectangular wooden box.

“A toothpick case?” he says with a grin. “Just what I always wanted.”

“Shut up,” she says, and reaches out with her spectral hand. If she had a face, Taako feels suddenly sure it would be scrunched with concentration; as it is, her form shudders a little and her shadowy finger coalesces, momentarily more solid. Then she touches it to the box, and an identical but much larger replica pops into existence in front of them, hitting the grass with a thud and rattle.

“Secret Chest!” Taako grins. “Sneaky.”

“Well, don’t just stare at it,” she replies. She’s clenching her spectral hands together, even though she’s given up the focus that made one solid. Even incorporeal, her body remembers its own nervous tells. So instead of drawing it out to tease her, Taako opens the box.

For a moment everything seems to stop. His heart, his lungs, his brain, the world, all skip like hitting an air pocket in the ink flow of a pen.

“I hope it’s…” Lup murmurs into the silence, “I mean, I thought you might...miss it. If I read that wrong, I’m really sorry.” The painful uncertainty of her voice breaks Taako out of his momentary shock; slowly he reaches out, and lifts the umbrella in both hands.

It’s the same shape as the old one, the question mark handle and the metal-capped tip, but the fabric of the outside is new. It’s a shimmery silver in the box, like mercury; when he touches it, the silver swirls and shifts to a rich purple. As he lifts it, turns it in his hands, he realizes it’s the same color as his hat.

“When it’s closed it’ll change to match your outfit,” Lup goes on, fast and oddly breathless. “And when it’s open it’ll camouflage you. It’s got some protective charms on it, of course, and obviously it’s a focus, like the old one. But it _definitely doesn’t_ eat magic.” 

“Lup,” he breathes, still staring at it, turning it around slowly in his hands.

“And you know, I’m pretty much all soul right now, so I put a bit of me in it, sort of literally? So I’ll be with you all the time, even when I’m doing Reaper stuff or whatever—”

“Jesus Fantasy Christ,” Taako interrupts, and it comes out sounding humiliatingly wet. He’s overwhelmed; Lup is right there, and he wants to wrap his arms around her more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life, so he clutches the Umbrastaff to his chest instead.

Flaring up, Lup hovers anxiously beside him. “Oh, oh no, don’t cry, I hate it when you cry and I can’t touch you, babe, it’s okay, I mean, do you like it?”

“Of course I fucking like it,” he snaps, squeezing his eyes shut. “I love it.” He sucks in a watery breath. “I miss you.”

“I’m right here,” she says, voice wavering, hushed and close. “I’m here. And I’m in there.”

Taako goes itchy-cold everywhere she touches him, familiar and not enough; against his chest, the Umbrastaff is unusually warm. “Is that dangerous?” he asks, eyes still tightly closed. “Is it scary? I don’t want to, you know, fucking, trigger your umbrella trauma or whatever all the time.”

A startled laugh rings in his ear. “No. No, it’s not dangerous, and it’s not scary. I mean, it wasn’t great, being stuck in the other one. But...mostly what was awful was hearing you, and not knowing how to _get_ to you. Making this one was kind of theraputic, actually. Barry helped me, and Magnus carved the handle. I’m okay. You know? Pretty okay.”

When Taako opens his eyes again, her empty red hood is right beside him, filling the edge of his vision. “I wanted you to go first because I thought my present was going to be the best one,” he complains, still clutching the Umbrastaff close.

She belly laughs this time, head thrown back. It’s the first real laugh he’s heard from her all day. “Let’s see what you’ve got, then.”

It’s surprisingly hard to let go of the umbrella; he settles for resting it against his shoulder instead, letting the handle tip toward him to brush his cheek reassuringly. Then he fishes around in his bag, unearthing a boiled leather scroll case. Lup hovers closer as he holds it out.

“Open it for me?” He does, unrolling the parchment for her to read. “Deed of Gift from Taako Taaco to the Sisters of the Merciful Mother in the amount of 500,000GP—holy shit, Taako, where did you get that kind of money—toward the construction, establishment, and upkeep of a community facility to be—” She turns her empty hood toward him, then back down at the document. “—to be named the Phoenix House for Orphaned and Displaced Youth.” 

She falls silent beside him, but her glow brightens, crackling; it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “It’s really over now, you know?” he murmurs, trying to ground her a little. “This time we actually get to rebuild. And I mean, it’s not as amazing as a whole-ass magic school, but. They break ground in a couple of months.”

“This is incredible,” Lup finally replies, soft and wavery. “I can’t believe you matched me for birthday sap quotient.”

“Treasure this moment, it may never happen again.”

“Taako.” She leans in, overlapping with him again; the Umbrastaff warms at her touch. “Thank you. Happy birthday.”

Carefully he rerolls the parchment and slides it back into the case, holds it and the umbrella in his lap as he looks out over the night-darkened crater that once was Greenhold. “Happy birthday.”

***

Lup’s body is nearly ready. Nobody has expressly said this to Taako, but he knows. He can tell by the way Barry fidgets at dinner in the dining hall. He can feel it in the crackle of Lup’s energy, restless, volatile. Both of them have stopped talking about the progress altogether, and he took the hint to lay off asking; neither of them have said anything about what, if any, transmutation might be wanted before Lup’s soul takes up residence.

Taako hasn’t even been out to Barry’s creepy cave to snoop in months. He saw the very beginning of the process, helped set up the tank, helped Lup pick an outfit to lay by for re-embodying day, but honestly once the blob in the goo started to look like a body it freaked Taako out. He’s seen his sister’s lifeless body too many times already, and it seems unbearably lonely for her to be floating in a womb without him.

For the moment, he’d rather focus his attention on the conscious ball of nervous energy that is his sister’s soul. It’s a struggle to keep her busy, especially when she can’t really touch anything; when she’s not hovering anxiously after Barry, she’s hovering anxiously around Taako. He takes her to see the site of the future Phoenix House three times, including for the groundbreaking; she tags along weekly to his meetings with Ren and Knack, but he still can’t bring himself to ask her if she wants to move into the new house with him. Together they sit at the kitchen island in the THB suite and plan a menu for Candlenights, because Taako will be damned if the BOB goes another holiday eating a mediocre “special dinner” at the dining hall. When Kravitz is visiting, Taako organizes impromptu double dates to Rockport, or Goldcliff, or any of the other places he carried Lup to on his arm that she never got to actually see.

Eventually, Taako starts to mentally prepare himself for the possibility that Lup won’t tell him when the re-embodying is going to happen, and will just show up one day newly corporeal. He’s not a fan of that idea. He wants to be there for her, womb to tomb and all that, and offer whatever help she might need. He wants to support Barry too, who’s an emotional wreck on a _boring_ day. He wants to be present and useful and calm, and then wants to vacate the premises the moment it looks like they’re about to start kissing.

He doesn’t want to be caught off-guard by everything he’s feeling. If he just has some lead time, he can sublimate his emotions into cooking like any self-respecting introvert. Has he changed so much that Lup can’t anticipate what he wants? Is she afraid he doesn’t want to be there? Doesn’t want to help her with the transition? 

Does _she_ not want _him_ there?

Two weeks before Candlenights the question’s still haunting him; he’s anxious as fuck, and he hasn’t even started shopping yet. When Kravitz calls to say he’s got a few hours free, Taako kicks Lup out of his suite and drags his boyfriend into the Pocket Spa for some quality pampering time. 

“Honestly, Taako,” Kravitz says as they lie on parallel tables while Unseen Servants, Raul 1 and Raul 2, administer a much-needed deep tissue massage, “I’m just happy you’re getting to spend so much time together now. Once she’s adjusted to being corporeal again, she and Barry will have to undergo fairly rigorous Reaper training. I’ll be keeping them quite busy.”

“That’s not really comforting, hon,” Taako tells him. Kravitz reaches across the space between the tables; Taako sighs as a knot loosens in his shoulder, then reaches over to take his boyfriend’s hand. “I’m sorry. I promise, I’m not gonna worry about my sister the whole time you’re here.”

Kravitz squeezes his fingers. “It’s okay to be worried, love. I understand. But I do think it would do you good to relax for a while.”

“Yeah. You help, just being here.”

“Oh?” Kravitz’s voice tilts up into a smirk. “Just being here?”

Taako interlaces their fingers. “I mean. Fooling around in the hot tub would help too.”

***

Fooling around _does_ help; Kravitz is gentle with him, worshipful in a way that feels like a gift and not like charity. They move from the hot tub to the shower to the cloud-soft bed in a haze of kisses and soft touches and slow pleasure, and Taako falls asleep with his nose tucked into the cool curve of Kravitz’s neck.

He wakes in near-darkness, alone. The spa is quiet except for the gentle gurgle of the hot tub, illuminated only by a candle he left lit on a side table. 

“Krav?”

In the fabric-draped room, his voice gets eaten almost the moment it leaves his mouth. He slides out of the bed and into a silky robe, as cool to the touch as Kravitz’s skin, and pulls open the tent flap spa door.

His bedroom is quiet and dark too, with no sign of Kravitz; in nightvision view it looks smaller, as narrow and cramped as his quarters on the Starblaster. It’s too small. He wants to see the sky, have some open air around him, so he crosses the room and opens the door.

There’s a party in his living room. Balloons and streamers, bodies and chatter, lights on so bright they’re blinding. He clutches his robe closed with one hand as he gets his bearings, and then an arm comes around his shoulders and a glass is pressed into his other hand. 

“Taako!” Barry says in his ear. “Finally! We thought you’d never show, bud.”

“Show?” Taako asks, still trying to clear his vision. “For what?”

“My birthday party, goofus.”

He blinks hard. When he opens his eyes again, Lup is standing in front of him. Standing, in a real, physical body, in a wine-colored dress he’s never seen before. “What do you think?” she asks, spreading her arms. She laughs, gives a spin, and he stumbles toward her on legs that suddenly feel like lead. She doesn’t seem to move, but somehow he can’t reach her—every time he takes a step, she’s still feet away. 

“Lup,” he tries to say, but no sound comes out. “Lup!”

“Taako?”

He wakes up in the plush spa bed, face smashed into Kravitz’s chest and a voice murmuring in his ear. “Hey. You’re safe. Wake up.”

“M’wake,” Taako slurs, heart pounding. The dream crumbles away from his consciousness like ash after a fire; he doesn’t try to chase after it. With deliberate effort tries to relax his tensed limbs and slow his racing mind, until all that remains is the image of Lup, corporeal, spinning. 

After a little while he registers a hand stroking through his hair and another pressed to his lower back; Kravitz doesn’t say anything else, just holds him and quietly, purposefully breathes. Taako hides his face as best he can, and tries to match it. “Dream.”

“Yeah,” Kravitz agrees. “We could get up soon, if you want. It’s almost morning.”

“Maybe. How long can you stay?”

“That’s flexible. But you,” says Kravitz with a kiss to Taako’s head, “have a lunch meeting with Ren.”

“Been peeking at my day planner, huh?” He props himself up on his elbows, and finds Kravitz smiling at him beatifically. 

“I’ve never had another person to organize my schedule around. It’s fun. I’ve gotten much more of the paperwork backlog done knowing I have time with you to look forward to.”

The little shock of joy this brings dispels the last lingering anxiety of the dream. Taako huffs a laugh, and wriggles up the bed for a kiss. “Nerd. Stay for coffee, then.”

Kravitz tangles their legs together and kisses him again, warm and intent. “Can I get some extra sugar in mine?” he asks, grinning with excessive innuendo.

This time it’s impossible not to laugh in his face, and Taako might almost feel bad if Kravitz didn’t immediately break into giggles too. “I hate your guts,” Taako sighs, collapsing back onto the mattress and wiping his eyes. “Hoo boy.”

Beside him Kravitz stretches, still chuckling, and swings his legs out of bed. “I love you too. But I will take a little hazelnut in mine, I liked that last time.”

“Told you.”

By unspoken agreement that is slowly becoming a routine, they shower together and dress in matching fluffy white robes. As Taako twists his hair up off his neck and Kravitz walks around extinguishing the candles they’ve left burning in the spa, tiny flashes of his dream come back to him; a silky robe instead of a fluffy one, his dark and empty bedroom outside the spa, opening the bedroom door to find...what? Uneasy, he ties up his hair carelessly and cinches his robe more tightly. Krav is waiting by the curtain door, poised to sweep it open. “Ready?”

“Sure.” They step through, and the bedroom isn’t as dark or as small as Taako was suddenly sure it would be. With a murmured word and a touch he collapses the spa into a canvas square folded over itself like a pinwheel, and tosses it onto the vanity where Kravitz is absently preening, adjusting the glittering beads and cuffs that shine in his hair. Morning sunlight, earlier to reach the moonbase than the world below, is filtering in through the curtained window. Everything is as it should be. Taako turns to the door with purpose, ignoring the nagging flash of dream-feeling, and opens it. 

On the other side, Lup is floating in the dim living room, looking lost. The sight brings him up short, and her empty hood turns toward him. “Um. Hey. Are you...are you all right?”

Taako grips the doorknob; behind him, he feels Krav’s hand at the small of his back. It’s reassuring. He shouldn’t need reassurance in a simple conversation with his sister. “Yeah. Are _you_ all right?”

“Yeah,” she replies. “I just...I had a weird feeling, or something.”

“Oh. I had a weird dream.” This is when, if she had a body, she’d take his hand. She reaches out, even though she can’t, floats a little toward him. Taako crosses the distance, lets his hand overlap with hers. “Come hover in the kitchen? I’m gonna make some coffee.”

***

Kravitz drinks his coffee with just a touch of hazelnut cream, because in spite of Taako’s efforts his palate is completely unsophisticated. Taako has an exceptional palate, and drinks his coffee black with a boatload of sugar because he likes to overindulge and loves to defy expectation. Lup used to take her coffee somewhere in between, sweet but not too light; Taako gets down an empty mug and sets it at the table for her, just to make things feel less weird. Since Kravitz doesn’t need to eat and Lup can’t, Taako doesn’t bother making breakfast, just retrieves a Fantasy Pop-Tart from his stash and dunks the corner into his cup.

“Someday you’re going to get scurvy,” Lup tells him, and he bites the soggy corner off before waving the Pop-Tart at her.

“These have strawberry filling. That’s fruit.”

“How did you ever become a famous chef?”

They bicker casually for a while in some semblance of normality, until Kravitz finishes his coffee and stands. “I’m off. Shall I come back tonight?” he asks, shedding his fluffy robe to reveal his favorite work suit, a construct, underneath. 

“Hell yeah, whenever you want.”

Leaning down to kiss his cheek, Kravitz smiles. “All right. Have a good day, you two.” Then he summons his scythe and slices between the planes in one lazy gesture; it seals up behind him as he steps through.

“Honestly?” Lup says into the stillness that follows. “I’m psyched to learn how to do that.”

“It does look pretty cool.” Taako drains the last of his coffee, clogged with Pop-Tart crumbs. “So, what’s shakin’ with you today?”

Lup folds her spectral hands together, and they phase through her empty mug. “Wanted to talk to you, mostly. About my new body.”

This takes a moment to process before relief and new, unprepared-for anxiety crash together in Taako’s chest. It’s like a little jolt, that radiates down his arms and makes him grip his mug tighter. “Oh.”

“Is that okay?” she asks, uncertain, and he reaches out automatically.

“Yes! Yeah. I didn’t think you were going to ask.”

Lup leans in, flaring a little. “What? Why?”

“I don’t know.” Taako settles with one hand on her coffee mug, tingling where her hands are, and one hand on his. He feels stupid, but this is still the closest he can get to holding her hand, and he’ll take it. “You stopped talking about the progress, I thought maybe you didn’t want anybody to know.”

“You’re not _anybody_, you dingus, of course I want you to know. It’s just...scary. And I want it so badly. It’s easier to try to forget about it, talking doesn’t make it grow faster.” She sighs heavily, though it’s more like the memory of a sigh. “But it’ll be ready soon, and it needs a little work before I’m gonna feel right hopping on in.”

“Whatever you need,” Taako says, sagging a little with the relief of it. “The best Transmutation wizard ever is on it.”

“It won’t be weird?”

“I was there the first time,” he reminds her, “you squeezed my hand so hard I thought you’d break my fingers.”

Her answering laugh sounds more at ease. “Yeah, but that time you didn’t have to...you know. Think too hard about the end results.”

“Lup. It won’t be weird. It’s _important_. And if you think I’m letting anyone else do it now that you’ve asked me, you’ve lost your flippin’ mind.”

***

They spend the morning making a plan. They swipe an elvish anatomy book from the BOB library and write all over it, circling what Lup does want and crossing out what she doesn’t. It’s not like she’s ever been shy, and after a hundred years crammed on the Starblaster Taako’s had an eyeful of _everybody_, but they sketch out the details in clinical terms until things devolve into a game of who can draw the funniest bush on the genital diagrams.

Eventually Lup gives in, dispelling her Mage Hand and slumping over the couch in a giggly heap. “_Candlenights_ bush,” she shrills, delighted. “You’re a genius.”

“I’m an _artist_,” he replies, closing the book and pushing it away.

Lup hums. “Lucky me. Speaking of, I have one last thing to ask.”

“Shoot.” Taako lays back in his armchair, crossing his legs. “You want permanent vajazzling? Tacky, but I bet you could pull it off.”

She snorts. “You asshole. Nothing like that. It’s my face.”

“What about your face?” he asks, glancing over, even though she doesn’t have a face to look at. 

She waves a spectral hand in his direction. “I want to look like you. So we’re identical again.”

“What?” Taako sits up in the chair, jokes forgotten; out of habit he touches his cheek, and finds his glamour still in place. “We literally just spent hours planning how to make you not identical.”

“That stuff doesn’t count. Look, I know you wear that glamour all the time so people don’t know what’s changed, but you don’t have to.” She sits up, leaning her elbows on her knees. “If I look like you do, then you _won’t_ have to.”

“That’s not why I—” He swallows hard, his throat closing around the words. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Why?” she replies, voice rising; little flares of energy light up around her shoulders like flames. “It’s _my_ body we’re talking about! If you don’t want to look like twins anymore, just fucking _tell me_.” 

Her voice breaks, just a little, but the sound of it is like Taako’s chest cracking open. The idea is so horrible, that he _wants_ things to be this way, that he feels his ears pin back and all the blood drain from his face. Lup’s empty hood is fixed on him now, and the creepy void where her face, _their face_, should be is making it hard to breathe. Popping up to his feet, he grabs the book from the table and whirls away to his room. 

She follows him, of course, he knows she will, and in here it’s almost worse; he can see his stunned reflection in the vanity mirror, and there’s nowhere else to go.

“Taako,” she says, quieter now, hovering in the doorway. “Babe, I...I could hear you in Wonderland. I know how hard that choice was for you. I thought...maybe it would help, if I chose it too.”

“It wasn’t _hard_,” he spits, throwing the book down on the floor. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands; they flutter, until he wraps his arms around himself to keep them still. “It wasn’t hard _enough_. If I’d known what I was giving up, I wouldn’t have done it.”

Lup drifts closer, her hands out; her edges are blurring, and Taako can’t tell if it’s her control slipping or the sudden wetness of his eyes. “I know you wouldn’t, but I’m glad you did. I just wanted you to get out of that hellhole alive, Taako. I just wanted you to survive long enough to remember me. It doesn’t matter what you look like, what we look like, compared to that.”

“It matters to me!” He closes his eyes against the bright glow of her. “I can’t...I need you to look like I remember. Sometimes I can’t remember you at all.” There’s static at the edges of his mind now, even as he says it, and a ringing in his ears. He tries to breathe. “If you look different, how am I gonna know what’s _real_?”

“Taako, listen to me. It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m right here, I’ll always be here to help you remember. Okay?” He can feel her hovering closer, the tingle of her against his arm. “Hey, listen, I saw your plans for the house. I know you didn’t actually ask us yet, but I talked to Barry about it. We both agreed, we want to move in. Also I have some suggestions.”

Taako covers his face with his hands as his lungs slowly come back under his control. “Of fucking course you do.” 

“Soundproofing between our bedrooms, for one.”

“GROSS. And that’s on the spell blueprint, not the architectural one.” The staticky feeling in his mind is starting to recede, so he wipes his face and opens his eyes again. He still doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he tugs his hair out of the tangled bun he threw it in earlier and starts to braid it down over his shoulder. “What else.”

“Well, the shower in my bathroom could be a little bigger–”

“Are they all going to be _sex things?_”

Lup chuckles. “No, but I figured I’d get all the intimate discussions into one day.”

“Well, tell them to Ren instead, we have a meeting this afternoon.” He finishes the braid and ties it off, looking up at the vanity mirror out of habit; with the glamour on, he doesn’t look like he’s been crying.

“I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to,” Lup says in the mirror beside him. 

“It’ll be your house too.”

Her shoulder phases into his. “I’m not talking about the house. I just...I hope you know that I love your real face.”

“_This_ is my real face,” he replies. “Okay?” Lup’s silent for a long time, long enough that Taako gets up and starts rifling through the closet for an outfit because he can’t just sit there with their argument hanging over him. It’s getting colder in the world below; maybe the wool trousers? They go best with blue, so he lays them out with the satiny high-collared shirt. After a brief search, he finds the bomb-ass black half-cape he picked up at a market in Goldcliff on the floor underneath a pile of jackets, and lays that out on the bed as well. “I’m getting dressed,” he warns her, and she gives a softly put-out sigh before turning away. 

“Okay.”


	3. Candlenights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I can say about this one is be ready to cry over the perfect art for this chapter by   
[terezis](https://terezis.tumblr.com/) and [blu-art](https://blu-art.tumblr.com/)!

_“How did it go?”_ Angus asks when he picks up the Stone.

Taako frowns. “How’d you know it was me? And what, no hello?”

Angus huffs a fond sigh down the line. _“Hello, sir. I set a special ringtone for you. I assume it went okay, or you wouldn’t be teasing me.”_

“Everything was fine,” Taako reassures him, transferring his Stone to a Mage Hand so he can get both of his own hands on the potato masher. “True Polymorph worked like a charm, we let it set for an hour and then she jumped right in there no problemo. Came out wobbly as a newborn foal, but we knew that was gonna happen.”

_“Is she there? Can I talk to her? What is that banging, are you cooking?”_

“Turkey dinner, that’s the potato masher. And no, she’s upstairs with Barry.” He pauses to pour a little more milk into the bowl. “Um. Napping.”

He can almost hear the face Angus is making. _“I get it, sir.”_

“You’re five, you definitely don’t. Time for the secret ingredients, you remember what they are?” He knocks the masher on the side of the bowl for emphasis, ignoring the bits of potato that fly up onto his apron. 

_“Ketchup and mustard!”_ Angus answers triumphantly.

“A-plus, kid. Homemade though, none of that store-bought shit. It’s full of preservatives.” He Mage Hands the Stone closer as he scrapes the condiments out of their jars and into the mix.

Angus’ voice is tinny, but the satisfied tone still reads. _“It’s nice to know the right answer to something for sure. My exams have been tough so far.”_

“Well, you’d better be aceing them, I have a bet going with Merle that your GPA will beat Mavis’.”

_“That’s not really a fair comparison, we don’t even go to the same school.”_

Mixed and fluffy, the mash goes covered into the warming drawer. “Hey, it was Merle’s idea. Not my fault you’re a genius.”

_“That reminds me though–did you cry?”_

“What?” Taako straightens again, stretching the ache out of his lower back.

_“This morning, with Lup,” _Angus explains. _“Merle and Magnus were betting on whether or not you cried.”_

“Those shitheads.” Of course he fucking cried. He exhausted his magic making sure her body was perfect, helped her wobble out of the tank and into a robe, and lost his shit completely the minute she smiled at him with her own, real, living face. He’s never felt so many different things at the same time in his entire life, and hopes he never will again. “No, I didn’t _cry_.”

_“I see,”_ says the kid, with a knowing tone. Taako blows a raspberry into the stone and pulls the oven open to check on the vegetables. They’re crackling merrily in oil, smelling just about done as he shakes the tray.

“Can you hear that?”

_“Yeah! Are you making Brassica of the Gods?”_

“That’s not what it’s called.”

_“You said I could name it! Broccoli and cabbage sprouts are both genus Brassica, and cheese is a gift from Istus.”_

“Cheese is from the Plane of Thought,” Taako protests, and he can hear Angus tut.

_“Okay, but whose gift made it possible to connect with Joaquin and food from his plane?”_ He has a point, so Taako won’t dignify it with a response; just because a statement doesn’t start with “Well, actually…” doesn’t mean he should encourage it. Instead he pulls the tray out of the oven and sets it on the counter to cool off. After a comfortable silence, a soft, longing sigh filters over the line. _“I wish I could come for dinner. But I have another exam tonight, and a paper due tomorrow.”_

“Hachi machi, kid. You still have to eat something.”

_“I know. I will. It’s the first night of Hanukkah too, and I just...I really want to come home. But I’ll be done in a few days.”_ He sounds tired, all of a sudden; more than that, he sounds sad. Taako hates it immediately. Taako also suddenly hates that he never noticed or bothered to ask if Angus is actually _practicing_, if he has a place to go to services, if he wanted apples and honey or brisket or kugel over the fall holidays Taako’s always ignored, or if he fasted and atoned for whatever sins a shockingly kind eleven-year-old could commit. 

“You’ll have plenty of time off for Candlenights break,” he offers, though it doesn’t feel like enough. “Do you have a menorah at school?”

_“No, I left it in my room. I thought it would be silly to bring it for just a few days. And I’m not supposed to have open flames in the dorm anyway.”_

Taako glances around the kitchen, tallying up what’s left to be done; then he looks at the clock. Down on the surface, the sun is setting. “Where’d you put it? I’ll light it here.”

Through the Stone, Angus gives a surprised little sound. _“Really? Um...it’s in the chest, at the foot of the bed. There should be candles too.”_

Taako wipes his hands on a kitchen towel and crosses the suite to Angus’ room. The chest, when he opens it (“Not even locked? Ango, have I taught you nothing?”), is charmingly stuffed with trinkets, some Taako recognizes from past adventures, some he doesn’t. With a little digging and Angus’ guidance, he finds the menorah carefully wrapped in a Jeff Angel tee shirt along with a seder plate. It’s heavy, probably real silver, and incredibly beautiful; nine budding branches intertwined, studded with leaves and each topped with a candle cup shaped like a delicate flower. “Wow,” he murmurs, turning it over in his hands. 

_“It was my Grandpa’s,”_ Angus explains, quiet.

Taako retrieves the box of candles, and heads back to the kitchen. “You lit it with him, huh?”

_“Yeah.”_

“My Auntie used to light candles for Hanukkah. She wasn’t real religious, but she did some things. Couldn’t afford anything like this, though, she just stuck beeswax candles to the windowsill.”

He’s rewarded with a giggle as he sets things up on the kitchen table. _“That works too.”_

“Okay, bubeleh,” he declares, two candles placed, Prestidigitation ready at his fingertips. “You have to sing the song, I don’t remember the words.”

_“You mean the blessing?”_

“Whatever. Ready?”

_“Yes, sir. Remember, you light the shamash first--”_

“The middle one. I remember.”

_“Okay.”_ The candle flickers to life, and Taako lifts it, waiting. A moment later Angus’ piping voice comes quietly through; the way he sings the tune is a little different than Taako remembers and there are more verses than he expected, but it brings him back to Auntie’s house anyway. With sudden clarity he remembers the dark of nightfall, Lup’s hand in his, the smell of their dinner cooking in the oven or simmering on the stove. His Auntie’s voice, warbly with age, and the glow of the candles she’d shaped herself in her rough hands.

He lights the first candle, puts the middle one back in its place. When Angus comes to the end of the blessing, Taako murmurs along a quiet _Amein_. He lets the silence rest for a while, after, trying to picture all the details of Auntie’s kitchen, trying to imagine Angus in the dorm room he hasn’t yet seen. He almost forgets the Stone of Farspeech is still on, until Angus murmurs through again. _“Thanks, Taako.”_

[ ](https://terezis.tumblr.com/post/188182945804)

Clearing his head with a deep, sharp breath, Taako turns back to the stove and the vegetables waiting to be dressed. “No problemo. Now tell me about this exam you have later.”

***

The food is ready, the wine is on ice, and Angus is reciting equations to Taako when he hears the suite door click open.

“That smells SO FUCKING GOOD!” his sister screams from the hallway, with zero sense of decorum, and Taako’s stomach explodes with butterflies. 

“Hold on a sec, pumpkin,” he says into the Stone, and abandons it on the table.

In the hall, Barry has his own Stone up to his ear, and one arm supporting Lup. “–just got downstairs for dinner. Yep. Uh huh. Taako? Bud, are you kidding? He bawled worse than you at a wedding.”

“Shut up, Barry,” Taako hisses, elbowing him out of the way and taking Lup’s arms. Barry laughs and lets him; Lup sways into his hold on unsteady legs with a maniacal grin. 

“Babe. Babe, I’m so fucking hungry.”

“Good thing I made enough to feed an army, then,” he tells her, leading her slowly along the hall. “But leave some leftovers for when Mags comes tomorrow.”

When they come into the kitchen, Lup pauses; wide-eyed, she steps into his arms to rest her weight against him, looking around the room. “Wow.”

On the table, Taako’s Stone crackles. _“Happy new body day!!” _Angus shouts across the line, and Lup laughs, letting Taako deposit her in a chair. 

“Happy Hanukkah, little man! When are you coming home?”

_“Just a few more days! I have to go take another exam, but I’ll call back later, okay?”_

Taako leans over to grab the Stone. “You’ll _eat dinner_ and write your paper later. We’ll talk to you tomorrow at sunset, yeah?”

_“Yeah, okay,”_ comes the disappointed response. _“Bye! I love you!”_

“We love you too, Angus!” Lup yells before Taako can end the call. When he scowls at her, she just holds out her plate with a shit-eating grin.

Dinner is quiet, once they actually settle down to eat; they’re all exhausted. It’s enough for Taako to watch Lup savor every bite of her meal, cataloging all the familiar gestures of her body and microexpressions of her face. Barry is doing it too, Taako can tell by the way he’s staring.

After the leftovers are put away, they take the wine into the living room and tangle together on the couch, legs and arms overlapping regardless of comfort or practicality. It’s everything Taako’s been missing; with wine in his system and Lup’s heartbeat under his ear, he can feel all the tension he’s been carrying slowly release. 

He pries his eyes open without remembering when he closed them. He must have fallen asleep. Lup’s arm is wrapped around him like he’s a teddy bear; as he blinks to clear his vision, he can see Barry on the other side of her, drooling onto her shoulder. Belatedly, he realizes a sound woke him, something familiar; then he hears a stifled gasp, and looks toward the source.

Kravitz is standing in the middle of the room, scythe still in one hand, the other trying and failing to cover a goofy grin. “By the Lady, you’re precious,” he whispers. “It’s late. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

That won’t do. Blearily, Taako reaches for him. “No. C’mere.”

Obediently Kravitz comes to his hand, kisses his knuckles and then his forehead. “The couch isn’t big enough for four.”

“Bad couch,” Taako agrees. “Better one in our house.” Then he tugs Kravitz down until he’s sitting on the floor, head against Taako’s knees, a bemused expression on his face. “Stay.”

“All right, love,” Krav murmurs, but Taako is already drifting back off to sleep.

***

As the Candlenights party approaches, it seems like everyone Taako knows who doesn’t already live on the moonbase has found themselves a bed there. Magnus takes up temporary residence in his old room in their suite; Merle puts sleeping bags in Angus’ room for Mavis and Mookie, and claims the couch for himself. 

When Davenport arrives at their door, tense as a bowstring with his ears pinned back and a duffel bag in his hand, Taako very generously offers him the Pocket Spa. It seems to help; he’s in the kitchen first thing the next morning, making the coffee. “Thanks for putting me up, Taako,” he says, sliding a mug across the table to him. “It’s...weird, being back here.”

“You don’t have to tell me, Cap’n,” Taako replies, bringing the mug to his nose for a breath and then to his mouth for a taste. “I can’t fuckin’ wait to get out of this place.”

“Cheers to that,” mutters the gnome, raising his mug in a toast. “But it’s good to see you. And if I can help with the party prep, just let me know.”

“Well, you _know_ chaboy’s making pickle soup, so. I might need some reminders about the recipe.”

“And I told the kids you’d make gingerbread,” Merle adds as he waddles in and heads straight for the coffee pot, the butt flap of his onesie pajamas blessedly buttoned. “They want to build houses.”

Taako scoffs into his mug. “Sure Merle, let’s give Mookie bowls of candy and a pastry bag of straight sugar icing to play with.”

Davenport shoots him a glare. “I’d be happy to, Merle. I’m sure Magnus will want to make one too. And I know Angus wants some help on his bond engine project,” he adds. “I brought some components he’ll need.”

“Bond engine, huh?” His own steaming mug in hand, Merle pulls up a chair and grins at Taako. “Next thing you know he’ll be off traveling the planarverse, and you’ll be livin’ in an empty nest!”

“There’s no nesting, I’m not spending Ren’s money building myself a _nest_, it’s the mansion I fucking deserve. And next year,” Taako gestures to Davenport with his mug, “we’ll have Candlenights down _there_.”

“Hanukkah too?” comes Angus’ voice from the doorway; he’s still in his pajamas too, the fancy plaid ones Taako and Kravitz gave him for his birthday. Rubbing his eyes under his glasses, he makes his way blind around the table to Taako’s side. “Good morning Merle. Good morning, Captain Davenport.”

They give good mornings back as Angus leans a little against the table.

“Sure, if you want,” Taako assures him. “Hanukkah too.”

He’s rewarded with a grin and a yawn. “MorningTaakocanImakepancakes?”

“If you use the step stool. Put some bacon in the oven, while you’re at it.”

Pancakes are easy, and Angus has made them plenty of times without supervision; Taako leaves him to it and turns his attention to his ongoing grocery list. “We’ll need molasses for gingerbread,” he muses, adding it to the list, “and probably more brown sugar.” 

“Confectioner’s, for the icing,” Davenport adds. “Cream of tartar.”

“And a buttload of candy for decoratin’,” says Merle, draining his mug. “Can’t forget that.”

Taako waves this away. “Magnus can pick that stuff out.” Silently he goes through the list, constructed over days of planning, matching the meal plan in his head to the ingredients on paper and what he knows is in the dining hall pantry. In the periphery he hears Magnus come in with a round of greetings, smells a fresh whiff of coffee as another cup is poured. Conversation becomes background noise as he nears the end of the list, double-checking because his memory is shit; then a sharp hiss and a clatter cuts through his concentration. When he glances up, Angus is stepping down from the stool with one hand cupped protectively around the other. 

“You okay Ango?” Magnus asks, frowning as Angus crosses to the sink and turns the water on.

“Fine!” comes the answer, quick and embarrassed. 

Taako smiles; if the kid had elf ears, they’d be blushing. “Might as well show it to Merle.”

Magnus looks at him, then back at Angus. “Did you cut yourself?”

“My hand slipped,” Angus explains, coming around to Merle’s chair; there’s blood welling up on the pad of his thumb. Merle grunts and takes Angus’ injured hand in both of his, murmuring a prayer.

Magnus still looks troubled; his eyes go from Angus to the abandoned cutting board full of strawberries, then to the stove where the skillet is waiting to be heated. “Maybe you should let Taako finish up.”

Angus flexes his hand, now healed, and shakes his head. “I need the practice!” he chirps. “I don’t have a kitchen at school.”

“Right on,” Taako confirms, holding out his own hand to show all the old scars, lighter cuts and darker burns that weren’t worth paying a healer to tend. “A good chef learns from the fuckups. Anyway, he fought the Hunger, he can slice some strawberries.”

Blinking, Magnus gives him a baffled look. “I kinda thought the point of everything we did was so we could have normal lives now.”

“Normal kids cook!” Taako shoots back, irritated.

Merle snorts. “You wouldn’t know normal if it bit you on the ass.” Then he turns to Magnus. “But Mavis cooks too.”

“Merle, you’re not really the model of great parenting.”

Taako slams his pencil down on the table. “What would _you_ know about parenting, Magnus? And anyway, _none of us are his parents!_”

Tense silence follows, the only sound Angus stirring the batter with his back to the table. Magnus, Merle, and Davenport are all looking at Taako like he’s said something incredibly uncouth, which isn’t an unusual look for Taako to receive–it’s just that usually he gets it from Lup. But Lup would get it, if she were here. Parents are overrated. Angus is _capable_, and that’s worth more than a dozen shitty parents.

Finally Davenport clears his throat. “Boys. Try to get into the spirit of the season, huh?”

Taako scowls, but forces his ears back up and returns to his list. Quiet falls over the kitchen again, just the sizzle of batter hitting the skillet in the background, so everyone jumps when the suite door slams open.

“Shit yeah!!” comes a shout from the hall. “Taako! _I love smells!_”

Magnus barks a laugh, and the uncomfortable tension is broken. “Lup, you share a bathroom with Barry.”

Pajama-clad and hair sticking up wildly, Lup appears in the doorway with a manic grin on her face. “I love _food_ smells!” she shouts, throwing her arms up.

“I made pancakes and bacon!” Angus shouts back, turning from the stove with a platter stacked high. 

Pure savagery ensues; while Davenport gets up to fetch plates and silverware, the others fall on the platter. Lup folds a pancake in half and eats it like a taco, while Magnus rips pieces off his and dips them into the puddle of syrup on the plate. Merle rolls his like a cigar.

Taako takes a pancake too, turning it over in his hands with a critical eye, then holds it up to his nose and sniffs it. Next to him, Angus appears and slides him a plate and fork. “Strawberries and basil?” Taako asks, setting the pancake down and picking up the fork. Angus nods. “Why?”

“Red and green, for Candlenights.”

“Creative.” The kid smiles, watching him cut a piece with the side of his fork and bring it to his mouth. Taako draws it out, chewing contemplatively while the others bicker over the rest of the stack. “Consistency’s just right. Interesting flavor combo, brown but not burnt, pretty round. Nice. Try to make them in a star shape next batch, holiday flair is always a hit.”

Angus lights up like a fucking Candlenights bush, and pulls up a chair at Taako’s elbow with his own plate: two pancakes that he carefully syrups, then sandwiches together with bacon in between.

“Negative a thousand points, you’re ruining them,” Taako tells him, slicing off another bite of his own.

Cheeks full of food, Angus gives him a pleased grin.

***

Magnus is aggravating, but he’s still the beefiest boy available, so he’s a no-brainer to recruit for grocery shopping. The Fantasy Costco never reopened after the Day, so the two of them and Lup hit the market and the general store down below. Neverwinter still looks a little rough, but the city is recovering; the general spirit is certainly helped by the strings of lights and Candlenights bushes everywhere. There’s a line of children at the western end of the market waiting to sit on the Star King’s lap and tell him what presents they want, and the smell of mulled cider and wine drift in the air. It’s festive, and it lifts Taako’s mood.

They load Magnus like a packhorse and arrange for a later pickup of even more; now that the BOB isn’t a secret, there are staff who make regular supply runs.

“It’s more of a pain in the ass to come down here to shop,” Taako says as they wait for their return cannonball to appear, “but at least we don’t have to haggle with Garfield anymore.”

Magnus shudders, shifting the bulk of the bags from one arm to the other. “Yeah, it’s handy that he grew me a body but..._it’s creepy that he grew me a body._”

“Hell yes, I think he’s creepy and I never even _met_ the guy, just heard his voice. What does he even look like?”

“_Indescribable_,” Taako and Magnus say in unison, and Lup cackles. Her nose wrinkles up when she laughs—Taako’s does too—and one side of her mouth curls up more than the other, showing one sharp, crooked canine. Taako finds himself noticing these little details over and over, remembering them and relearning them at once. He only let her carry one grocery bag, so he himself is saddled with three and had to strap his umbrella to his back instead of swinging it jauntily in hand. 

When they get back to the moon, breakfast has been cleared away and the kitchen is empty aside from Angus and Davenport, leaning together over a diagram on the table. 

“Now, the ring,” Davenport says, pointing with his pencil, “is constructed from three layers of crystal. Quartz is ideal; it’s strong, but conductive.”

“Quartz,” Angus replies, scribbling in his notebook. “Does it need to be natural, like a plane mirror?”

“In a way. It works best to use naturally occurring crystal, but the shape and the layers have to be formed by Transmutation, and it needs to be treated with Evocation magic.”

“Good thing you’ve got specialists in the family for that shit,” Lup remarks with a grin as they lug all the bags inside. Soon the chairs, the counters, and the rest of the table are taken up with groceries that Taako begins sorting.

“So the Evocation magic is what attracts the particle reactions that power the engine?” Angus asks, examining the diagram in front of him with this new information in mind. 

“Oh, particles? What are these particles you speak of?” Taako teases, pulling the molasses and brown sugar from a bag and setting them by the stove for later. 

“Electrons, photons, and magitrons,” Angus replies immediately. “I knew that already sir, I took basic Physics of Magic this semester.”

“Well la-di-dah.”

“You’re right, Angus,” Davenport interjects. “The Evocation magic is what attracts the bond reactions, and the layers of quartz conduct those reactions. The magitrons become fuel for the Evocation spells, the photons are released as light, and the electrons get converted to power for the engine.”

Angus nods, scribbling notes. “It must be amazing to see up close,” he says. “I mean, to see how strong the bonds between people actually are.”

Davenport smiles, soft and a little melancholy. “It is pretty amazing. Tangible bond strength and bond potential are things I tested for when choosing the crew. The twins were off the charts, of course, they could have powered the ship by themselves. But everyone had a measurably high bond potential with each other, even on first meeting.”

“Even Taako?” Angus asks with a grin in his voice; Magnus barks a laugh.

Taako scoffs and busies himself putting the perishables in the icebox.

“Actually, Taako had one of the highest bond potential ratings on record,” Davenport says, and Lup and Magnus both make insultingly surprised noises.

“Really?”

“But he was such a dick to everyone at the bond tests!”

Davenport tuts. “Personality has no bearing on bond potential, you ought to know that by now.”

Taako, fairly sure he isn’t blushing anymore, pulls his face out of the icebox and slams the door shut. “Anyway, I never met a test I couldn’t fuckin’ ace.”

“Except math,” says Magnus; Taako flips him the bird.

“I wrote a dissertation on Transmutational Mathematics, you dipshit.” 

Lup grins at him, huge and warm. “Aww, we all know you’re a big softie inside.”

Taako scowls at the room; they’re _all_ grinning at him now, and Angus looks particularly satisfied. “Whatever. Don’t fuckin’ spread it around, okay? And unless you’re helping with the gingerbread, then _clear out of my kitchen_.”

***

The wailing from New Phandalin is so loud it even reaches them on the fake moon; not when they’re inside, insulated by walls, but it rings through the campus assailing the ears of anyone leaving the domes. News about it reaches them too: some kind of creature in an ice keep needs putting down, or maybe rescuing, nobody has gotten close enough to find out and lived to tell the tale. The reward money for silencing the noise keeps going up, to the point where even Taako can’t ignore it anymore. So when Magnus brings it up at dinner the night before Candlenights Eve, he allows himself to be convinced.

“It’s been a while since we had a Tres Horny Boys adventure,” Magnus wheedles over his second helping of spaghetti. 

Mavis pats Merle’s wood arm. “Go on and have some fun, Dad. We’ll be okay here for a day.”

“Aw, what the hell,” Merle grumbles in assent. He has spaghetti sauce splattered through his beard, and Taako sighs.

“There’s still a lot of party prep to do tomorrow.”

Magnus grins. “But it’s an _ice keep_. There’s probably cool treasure! Get it? Cool?”

“Not to mention that reward money,” Barry adds, grinning sideways at him.

“Ren and I can handle the food prep tomorrow,” Lup tells him, and he groans and gives in.

“Fine! Fine. We’ll go kick some ass tomorrow, but if things start going south, I’m outski.”

“Yeah!!” Magnus throws up his fists, one of which is still holding his fork; a meatball soars up and splatters against the ceiling before plopping back down onto the table.

Laughter and chatter erupt around the table as plans are made and strategies discussed; Taako tunes it out, privately wondering what kind of boost his bank account might get. Then Lup leans into his side, resting her head on his shoulder. 

“This is gonna be a fun jaunt, right? Not something you need rescuing from.” It’s more like a directive than a question, and he takes her hand under the table.

“No rescuing needed, I promise.”

“Take your umbrella.”

“I will.”

She sighs and squeezes his hand.

***

It’s not a total disaster. The jingle-belled Santa’s helper suit is bordering on tragic, but he can pull it off. The impromptu party in the streets of New Phandalin afterward helps make up for the lack of treasure; he fills his bag with drinks and treats and reward money, imbibes enough spiked cider to warm himself, and enjoys the hero worship for a while. When that becomes overwhelming, he starts looking for a quiet corner near the bonfire; that’s how he finds Angus asleep across two chairs, wrapped in Magnus’ feathered cuirass and draped in a blanket. It’s adorable, but can’t possibly be comfortable, and the air beyond the fire is still snowy and cold.

“Babe,” Taako murmurs into his Stone; Kravitz answers immediately, as he almost always does.

“Taako! I stopped by the suite earlier, but Lup said you were out with the boys.” 

“Yeah, Merle is Santa now, it was a whole thing. But it’s cold and I have a sleeping kid here, can you pick us up?”

He can hear Kravitz grin. “Of course. I’ll be right there.” The Stone darkens, and in the same moment a rift opens a few feet away. How Kravitz always knows where he is, Taako doesn’t know, but it warms him. So does the way Krav pulls him into his arms immediately, kissing his forehead with chilled lips. “I love this look on you. You’ll have to tell me all about it.”

“Later.” Taako nestles into his arms in spite of the cold, taking a moment to shoot a text to Magnus: _Taking Angus home._ Then he turns his face up for another kiss, and Kravitz obliges. “You staying over tonight?”

“If you like,” Kravitz murmurs against his mouth; Taako grins and kisses him again.

“I like. Hold that thought, Bone Daddy.”

Kravitz snorts as Taako slips from his arms, and scoops the Angus-shaped bundle up from the chairs with a huff of effort. “This fuckin’ cuirass weighs more than the kid.”

“Well, we don’t have far to go,” Kravitz reminds him, and cuts another rift into the air.

They step through into the darkened living room of the suite, lit only by the sparkling Candlenights bush in the corner beside the Pocket Spa; Lup jolts up from the couch immediately as they step through, crossing to wrap her arms around Taako. “You’re home!”

He chuckles into her hair. “I texted you. Everything was fine.”

“I know, I know.” She heaves a relieved sigh, and kisses his cheek. “Hey, remind me tomorrow to tell you Barry’s idea about the lab in the basement, we were looking at the house plans again.”

“You know, every time I make another change, Knack comes a little closer to just straight up killing me with their truly enormous fists.”

“I’ll come along to the next meeting, they like me,” Lup assures him, then squeezes him again and lets him go. “I’m going up to bed. Love you.”

“See you in the morning. We gotta put the turkey in at nine.”

“I’ll be up. Night Krav!”

“Goodnight Lup.”

A moment later she’s gone, leaving them alone in the quiet of the living room, Angus still asleep in his arms. “Oof. Okay. Can you get the door to his room? I can’t hold him much longer.”

“Of course.” Krav crosses to Angus’ door, cracks it softly open. “Oh…”

Taako follows, peering inside; Merle, distressingly babyfaced with his bushy white beard shaved off, is crashed out on the bed with Mookie and Mavis curled around him. He’s already snoring, though not quite up to his deep-sleep decibels. 

“The couch it is,” Taako murmurs, and turns back to lay Angus out along the couch cushions and slide a pillow under his head. 

He stirs a little then, eyes fluttering open. “S’the party over?”

“Yeah,” Taako tells him, tucking the blanket in around him. “Go back to sleep.”

Angus smiles dopily, his eyes drooping closed again; his expression is so sweet it makes Taako’s chest pang. “Night Taako,” he mumbles, and in moments looks to be asleep again.

“You’re so good with him,” Kravitz whispers, wrapping an arm around Taako’s waist. 

“Oh, what does that even mean,” Taako hisses, back, trying to ignore the little surge of _something_ in his stomach. “He’s practically an adult.” But he turns off the Candlenights lights and lets Kravitz draw him away to the bedroom, and kiss him until he forgets what he was so embarrassed about, and pull the silly holiday costume off of him piece by piece.

***

Taako wakes in the dark, his mind fuzzy, with a vague feeling that something is wrong. Kravitz is asleep beside him, his construct worn out from their very pleasant holiday exertions; Taako curls into him and waits, straining his ears for any sign that something is amiss. Merle’s snoring reaches him faintly; the Silence Kravitz cast while kissing his brains out has clearly worn off. Maybe that’s what woke him? Then, after a long minute of quiet, he catches a soft hitch of breath and a sniffle from the living room.

Startled, he eases his way out of the bed and into pajamas, silently opens his door. Angus is leaning over the building plans that Lup and Barry must have left open on the table, peering at it without his glasses and holding his Stone up for meager light; as Taako watches, he counts the rooms in the private wing, considers, counts them again. When Taako opens his door wider and steps into the room, Angus startles, shrinking back onto the couch. His face is puffy like he’s been crying, and he looks caught. It’s startling—Angus never gets caught.

“You okay?” Taako asks after a beat of surprised silence. 

Angus pulls his knees up and turns off his Stone, throwing them into darkness. “I don’t know.”

Darkvision turns the room monochrome; it makes Angus look drained and dwarfed by the blanket and feathered cuirass he fell asleep in, weary in a way a child shouldn’t be. Weary in a way Taako remembers. He sits down next to him, close but not touching, folding his hands together awkwardly on his knees. “Tell me what’s eatin’ you? If you want.”

Angus scrubs his sleeve across his eyes, then leans over just enough to press his shoulder to Taako’s arm. “My family’s all gone. You must have figured that out by now, right? I’m an emancipated minor, I can go where I want, and do what I want.”

“I mean...I kinda assumed, yeah,” Taako replies, and presses his fingernails into the meat of his palms. “It’s...y’know, me and Lup did it too, so.”

“Lup told me, a little bit,” Angus admits, sniffling again. He doesn’t volunteer anything else, though, and Taako cautiously wraps an arm around him.

“Did something happen? I mean, you seemed...you were all right at the party, right? You know we weren’t really going to leave you in the ice keep with a troll?”

“I know,” Angus chokes out, but Taako can see his eyes filling again.

“Hey, hey, come on, what’s–”

“The Director offered me a room here, if I want it,” Angus interrupts, “and Carey and Killian are staying at least until they get married. But I don’t really want that.”

“The commute is hell,” Taako agrees, nonplussed, but Angus doesn’t even smile. 

“And there’s Raven’s Roost.”

“Sure,” Taako says with a nod, forcing his arm around Angus to relax. “Maggie would love to have you there.”

Angus goes quiet and worryingly still, then takes a slow, watery breath. “Magnus would be a great dad. But that’s not what I want. I don’t want a _dad_. I want _you_.” 

Taako can hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears; the room around them is gone, narrowed down to Angus, face slowly crumpling, shuddering to control his breath. He doesn’t know what to say. What does he say? His chest feels like it could crack apart if he opens his mouth, and he doesn’t know what would come out. 

“But if you don’t want me,” Angus says, wavering, “then I’ll...I’ll figure out something else.”

“What?” The question is knocked out of him like he’s been punched, and he leans over to see Angus’ face; of course, in the pitch dark of the room, he’s not looking at Taako, or at anything in particular. On the table, the unrolled parchment is covered in notes, some old, some new. _What about Angus?_ is scrawled, and underlined, in Lup’s messy writing along the first floor hallway. “Angus…”

“I’m sorry,” the kid replies with a watery voice. “I shouldn’t have...I mean, you’re right, there’s plenty of other places—”

“I want you,” Taako blurts, high and panicky. “Of fucking course I want you, what are you talking about?” He pulls Angus closer without thinking, and the boy scrambles into his lap, pressing his face into Taako’s shoulder. “It’s not...fuck. I’m not, I’m not _good_, Angus,” Taako says into his hair. “I’m better with Lup and Krav and everybody around, but you should have someone better.” He doesn’t like the way that comes out, wet and choked and not cool at all, and he hugs Angus tighter. 

“You love me though, right?” Angus says, muffled and small.

Taako tries not to squeeze the entire life out of him. “Yeah. Fucking...yeah.”

“I love you too. And you can’t tell me what to do, you’re not my dad.”

Then he _giggles_, and it makes Taako giggle, quietly hysterical. “You’re gonna be a shitty teenager, huh.”

Angus leans back a little, wiping at his eyes again. “Maybe.”

It’s been a long time, hundreds of years, but Taako remembers a bit of being small; he remembers the little kindnesses that shone like lamps in a difficult world. He remembers Auntie wiping his face when he cried, rubbing the tips of his twitchy ears, remembers how safe and loved he felt. He does it now to Angus, because if he speaks the words aloud he might fall apart, but Angus has to know it, has to know it _right now_. Angus’ eyes droop closed, expression loosening until he’s startled by a yawn.

“Yeah,” Taako agrees, then glances over at the table. He leans over with Angus in one arm, grabs a pencil where it’s fallen on the floor. Angus wraps his arms around Taako’s neck obligingly, turns with him and squints as Taako scribbles a note on the plans.

“I don’t have darkvision,” he says.

“Right.” Taako casts Light on the tip of the pencil, holds it up over what he’s written. “How’s that?”

Angus reaches out, traces the boxy shapes of the second floor; Taako and Krav’s room, Lup and Barry’s room, the scribbled-over spot at the end of the hall. “Ango’s room,” he reads, and slowly smiles.

[ ](https://blu-art.tumblr.com/post/188193632844/i-participated-in-tazbang-for-the-first-time-and)

[ ](https://blu-art.tumblr.com/post/188193632844/i-participated-in-tazbang-for-the-first-time-and)


	4. Spring Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features a gorgeous illustration by [divinelark](divinelark.tumblr.com)!
> 
> A few warnings for this one: there's explicit sex (Taakitz), harm to an animal, and some panic.

“I need a volunteer!” Taako barks, clapping to startle the students whose attention is flagging. He can’t blame them really—it’s a bright, clear day outside, the afternoon of classes before spring break. If he didn’t have to teach them, he wouldn’t be here either.

Usually he’d pick the student who looks the _least_ like they want to be noticed, but he’s feeling benevolent. “You,” he says, pointing at the first hand that was in the air. The tiny kenku, beak snapping with excitement, practically leaps over the students in his way as he hurries to the front of the lecture hall. “I hope you were paying attention for the last forty-five minutes.”

The kenku’s beak snaps again. “Yes, Professor!” 

“Draw your wand, Busby.”

“Buzzer, Professor,” chirps the child, pulling his wand from a holster on his belt and rolling up his sleeves.

“Like I said. Honestly, you should have had your wand drawn the minute you got down here. In the real world you gotta have your shit together.”

Buzzer grins. “I have my shit together!” he repeats, in a near-perfect mimicry of Taako’s voice. If Taako had understood that _every_ kid who wants to go to a prestigious magic school would be as annoying as Angus, he wouldn’t have agreed to actually _teach_ them.

“Funny. Show me two of the spells we covered today.”

“I only have one level 2 slot left, Professor.” 

Taako scowls; the kid looks utterly unintimidated. “Pick your favorite, then.”

Immediately Buzzer points his wand at himself and makes an excited gesture. Alter Self, Taako is sure, but the wandwork is sloppy; the resulting eruption of pinfeathers makes the rest of the class burst into giggles. Taako waves away the floating down with a hand, and in the middle of it Buzzer is holding his arms up, peering consideringly at the four sleek, shiny primary flight feathers he managed along each forearm. Then he looks at Taako, head cocked in question; if Taako had to guess, the kid seems a little disappointed.

“Not bad for a first try,” Taako concedes. “Go slower when you practice. Remember, if you’re gonna learn a gesture—”

“Learn it right!” The class finishes. Buzzer grins and gives a gravelly trill like an agitated beehive, and practically flaps back to his seat. Right on cue, the bell in the tower above them starts to ring and a flurry of chatter and book-slamming ensues. 

“We’ll pick up after break with Spider Climb,” Taako shouts over the din, “so for fuck’s sake, work on your Levitates!”

With a scattered chorus of “yes, Professor,” the wave of fidgety first years rush out the lecture hall doors like so much water. Alone at last when the doors swing closed, Taako sighs and pushes the scattered feathers out the window with a quick Gust, then Prestidigitates the chalkboard clear of his scribbled notes. Satisfied, he sinks into the chair behind the podium, pulling out his Stone.

He’s just dialing Krav’s number when the double doors burst open again, and he fumbles the Stone for a second before shoving it back in his pocket. It’s Buzzer, the oddball feathers flapping as he hop-runs up to the desk.

“Almost forgot!” he chirps, holding out a jar. “From my mom.” Bewildered, Taako reaches out to take it, and the moment this task is discharged Buzzer turns and hurries off again. “Happy break, Professor!” he calls over his shoulder, and then he’s out the door.

Taako turns the jar over in his hand, watching the slow viscous motion of the syrup inside. _Creaky Tree Apiary_, the label reads, and then handwritten, _Wild Lilac Honey_. 

Teaching might be worth it, after all.

***

The light is on in his temporary office down the hall. Locks mean nothing to his family at this point, so it’s not a cause for alarm; rather, based on the silhouette he can see through the frosted window, it might be a cause for some fun. When he Knocks the door open, Kravitz is sitting cross-legged behind the desk in Taako’s chair with a grin on his face.

“Professor! I’m a little worried about my grades.” The tie of his slightly-more-casual work suit construct is hanging loose around his neck, and the top three buttons of his shirt are undone; for Kravitz, this is the equivalent of a naughty schoolgirl outfit, and it shows a precise and delightful amount of tightly-curled chest hair. “I thought maybe I could...do some extra credit?”

Taako closes the door behind him, and clicks the lock. He feels wards against eavesdropping and intrusion flare up under his touch; his own work, developed decades ago to carve out some modicum of privacy aboard the Starblaster. “Well, you get an A+ in the looks department, so that’s a good start. Also, that’s my chair.”

Kravitz leans back, uncrossing his legs and splaying them in invitation. “I’m happy to share it.”

“Generous of you,” Taako hums, rounding the desk and climbing into Kravitz’ lap to kiss him. Krav’s arms go around him immediately and he sighs, deep and satisfied. When Taako slides a hand into the open neck of his shirt to trace his nipple, he grips Taako’s hips tighter.

“So...my grade?” he stutters, already struggling to keep in character; Taako pulls open his fly with his other hand and reaches in to cup his hardening cock.

“I think if we work together we can get it up.”

Kravitz bursts into laughter, and Taako grins and enjoys it for a moment before tugging his briefs down and getting to work.

***

It’s unfair, how pretty Kravitz is when he comes. His brows crinkle up and his lashes flutter, and he sighs so delicately; he looks surprised every time, like he’s just been given a present on an ordinary day. He’s hot all the time, but Taako especially likes him this way, effortlessly vulnerable, placing himself in Taako’s hands. When the house is ready, their bedroom new and pristine, Taako’s going to figure out what it takes to make him shout. 

But for now, he’s content to taste the soft hum of pleasure Kravitz gives him as he arches and spills over Taako’s hand. It’s inflaming, how soft he looks, and Taako spreads his thighs to wedge himself closer. He’s hard, still mostly dressed, and now he’s getting come on the placket of his trousers, but he can’t care when Krav is kissing him like he’s dessert. 

“Can I finger you?” his boyfriend asks, a sweet tone in a filthy mouth. “Can I fuck you over this desk?”

“You have so many kinks,” Taako replies with an appreciative groan, and Kravitz laughs.

“There are just a lot of things I want to try.” 

He lets Kravitz lift him, lay him down on the desk and pull his boots and trousers off; they get distracted for a little while then, Krav’s lips and teeth on his throat, but soon enough his underwear are tossed and his shirt spread open beneath him like wings. This is good too, he thinks, Kravitz leaning over him with a hungry look, a slick finger sliding into him followed closely by another. Pleasure he’s coming to know the more time they spend together, but still not getting used to. “Babe,” he pants, reaching, and Kravitz descends to kiss him. “Babe, is it okay that we have sex every time we hang out?”

Kravitz, to his credit, takes this question utterly seriously; his fingers slow, pausing, and he kisses the bridge of Taako’s nose. “Do you not want to?”

“Don’t stop,” and it comes out pleading instead of sharp; his body pleads too, arching. “I want to.”

“So do I,” Kravitz says, a little strangled; he’s hard again, Taako can feel the blood-heated line of his cock brushing the back of his thigh. “Can I—”

“Yeah.” Krav’s fingers hook up and _press_, delivering a little jolt of pleasure that startles a cry out of him; then they’re sliding away, replaced with the implacable press of Kravitz’s cock. “I just,” Taako whines, grabbing at Krav’s arms, closing his eyes to feel every inch, “I don’t want you to think that’s all this is.”

“Taako,” comes the soft reply, a smile in it. “I’ve never once thought that. But it’s sweet of you to worry.”

Taako bites his lip, tips his head back as Kravitz slowly thrusts. “Ugh. Fuck me harder before I say anything else embarrassing.”

That gets him a chuckle, and a bite to his earlobe. “Mmm. I love you,” Kravitz tells him, and presses his knees wider to oblige him.

***

Barry and Lup are sprawled at opposite ends of Taako’s couch when he and Kravitz step in through a rift, each reading a different suspiciously necromantic-looking tome as their socked feet rub idly together. Barry barely looks up as they enter, absorbed, but Lup marks her page with a finger and grins. “Didn’t your class end forty-five minutes ago?”

“Shut up,” Taako says reflexively, and throws himself down on top of their feet with vengeful satisfaction. “How long have you been sitting here playing footsie on my couch?” 

“Please don’t tell me those books came from the cult we reaped last week,” Kravitz groans, as if that’s the most shameful display happening here. Lup gives him a showy wink, and mimes zipping her lips closed.

“I told Angus we’d call him when you got home,” Barry says, finally closing his book with a puff of dust and looking up. At last he has enough sense of shame to smile abashedly at Kravitz. “Hey, boss man.”

Kravitz heaves a put-upon sigh. “Just make sure they end up back in the vault.”

Barry scratches at the stubble on his cheek and gives a crooked grin; Lup, completely unconcerned, ignores all this in favor of pulling out her Stone. “Hey kiddo, you hit a stopping point?”

_“Just a few more minutes?”_ Angus replies, sounding distracted. _“We’ve almost got the motor done.”_

“We’re picking you up in five,” Taako says, leaning in Lup’s direction. 

Davenport’s voice comes through a little muffled. _“That ought to be enough.”_

“You too, Captain, come out to dinner with us. Barry’s treat,” Taako suggests, and gets kicked in the thigh for his trouble. 

Lup, at least, always has his back. “Ooh, we can go back to that gnomish place where I couldn’t eat before!”

“The Ham and Pickle.”

“Right!”

Davenport gives an amused huff. _“If you like. See you in five.”_

There’s a brief flurry of activity as shoes and jackets are fetched, and Taako takes the time to freshen up his mussed hair and fading glamour; Kravitz, meanwhile, changes his construct from the black suit he was wearing to a deep purple. They make a motley assortment, Kravitz so dark and Taako in bright trousers and a floral blouse, Barry’s habitual denim and Lup’s pale yellow shirtdress that might have once actually been Magnus’ shirt. It only gets stranger when Kravitz opens a rift to Davenport’s ship and Angus hops through, prim as ever in his sweater vest and cap, and their sea-weathered Captain follows after. 

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” he calls back, waving. On the other side, Orla lifts a hand from the ship’s wheel to wave back. 

“Have fun!” she shouts as the rift zippers closed, a gust of salty air puffing out.

Angus, arms laden with glinting metal, kneels by the coffee table to set his burdens down—a small motor in a cylindrical casing, trailing wires, and two halves of a miniature Starblaster made of tin. 

“It looks just like the ship!” Lup exclaims, even though it doesn’t really, and crouches down to coo over the model. “You’re so clever, Angus.”

Angus blushes, pleased. “Could you help me with the welding, after dinner?”

“Sure.”

“All right, all right, but that’s _after_. Let’s goooo,” Taako says with exaggerated impatience, and is rewarded with Angus’ giggle.

Kravitz gestures to Lup. “Would you like to do the honors? I’ve never been there.”

“Hell yeah!” Lup reaches into the air and her scythe, red-handled and viciously hooked, materializes in her hand. With two hands and focused enthusiasm she cuts a rift, and through it appears the cobbled main street of New Greenhold.

***

“...so then the Captain says—and remember, there’s only humans on this plane—Dav says, ‘Madam, I am two hundred and fifty-four!’”

The table bursts into raucous laughter, though most of them have lived or told or heard this story before; Thorpe pounds a fist on the table and guffaws, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Honestly, what human child would have a moustache?”

“And they just had _no_ idea what to make of Merle,” Davenport adds, chuckling into the dregs of his pint. Around them the pub has gone dim, candles starting to gutter in their sconces; closing was at least half an hour ago, but Thorpe insisted they stay for dessert while the staff cleaned up, awed and giggling among themselves. Now the last of the staff are gone, and Thorpe reaches across the table to take Davenport’s empty glass. 

“Let me get you another. A round of something special, for my special guests!” 

“Yeah, what happened to that bartender you had last time?” Taako asks as Thorpe makes his way behind the bar, stepping up on a block to reach an upper shelf. “You were running ragged back there all night.”

“Poor lamb, she got hit by a wagon and broke her leg. In three places! The emergency healer said she won’t be able to stand on it for weeks without more healing, which, you know, means more gold...she’s supporting her mother, too. I’ll go over there in the morning and see if I can’t help her with the bills a little.” 

“Well, if you won’t let us pay for dinner, then you can give the money to her,” Barry says, face flushed. He gets even more earnest when he’s drinking, and Lup makes a sweet face at him that makes Taako audibly gag.

“A kind gesture, Mr. Bluejeans,” Thorpe says as he returns with a tray; arrayed in a circle are seven amber-filled shot glasses lightly rimmed with cinnamon. “Here you are,” he says, passing them around, “and a special one for the young man.”

Davenport wafts the glass under his nose, and his moustache and ears twitch. “_Szarlotka_?” he says, feelingly, and Thorpe chuckles.

“_Szarlotka_! To friends, to health, _na zdrowie_!”

“_Na zdrowie_!” shout the four Birds with great enthusiasm, as Kravitz and Angus grin at each other and fumble along.

When all the shots are downed, conversation starts up again in little pockets around the table; Taako, drowsy and pleasantly buzzed, wriggles his way under Kravitz’s arm to press his flushed cheek to cool lapels. Kravitz chuckles softly and lays a kiss in his hair. “All right, darling?”

“Mmm. S’was a good idea.”

“Definitely.”

Taako closes his eyes, letting the murmur of voices and occasional spikes of laughter flow over him without really taking any of it in; his mind surfaces the pieces of his first lonely visit here, overlays them with Lup on their birthday and the group of them here today, the glow of candlelight and the taste of apple and vodka on his tongue. 

Then Kravitz’ whole body stiffens; across the table Barry sucks in a breath and Lup exclaims “What the fuck?” When Taako opens his eyes, they’re both looking at Kravitz with startled expressions.

“You feel that?” Barry asks belatedly, though it’s obvious all three of them are reacting to something. Kravitz nods, and starts to un-wedge himself from the booth. 

“Thorpe. Does this establishment have a basement? Some’s casting necromancy below us.”

The gnome gets up from the table, blinking. “There's a cold storage room. But who would be—”

“Does it have an outside entrance? I thought we were the only ones here,” Lup says, drawing her wand, and Thorpe’s eyes sharpen.

“Yes, a cellar door in the beer garden.”

“I’ll cover it,” Barry says, and Davenport hops up beside him when he sways.

“Steady on. I’ll come with you.”

Thorpe points them to a hallway beside the back of house doors, then gestures. “The inside door’s through the kitchen.”

Taako slips from the booth to follow Kravitz and his sister, turning back just for a moment to block Angus with his arm. The kid is already drawing his own wand, his expression all business and spoiling to argue before Taako even opens his mouth. “Stay here.”

“Taako—”

“_Stay. Here._ Protect Thorpe, yeah?”

Angus scowls but nods, and Taako hurries after the disappearing reapers.

***

There’s a pitiful yowling coming from the bottom of the stairs, and a necromantic aura that makes Taako’s scalp prickle. 

_I’ll take point,_ Lup mouths, gesturing; Kravitz narrows his eyes consideringly, then nods. Quiet as mice they slip down the stairs, Taako at the rear with his umbrella in his hand. At the bottom there’s nothing immediately to see but dusty racks of wine bottles, most of them a touch too fancy for a town like New Greenhold. The yowling is closer down here, but growing fainter, and Lup’s ear flicks toward it as she leads them along the aisle. At the end of the rack she stops and hooks her thumb to the left. Kravitz nods again, and Lup’s scythe appears silently in her hand; she lights a flame in the other, grins, and bursts around the corner.

“Stop in the name of the Raven Queen,” she says, booming, and Taako can hear the cellar doors burst open as he and Kravitz rush in behind her. 

It’s a startlingly pitiful scene. In the center of a charcoal-drawn circle of runes, a shabby-looking gray cat lies prone with a young human leaning over it, her shadow-wreathed hand on the nape of its neck. Her leg is in a cast from the knee down, and when she looks up in shock Taako recognizes her face. 

“The _bartender_?” he hisses, disbelieving; for a moment her hand tightens around the cat’s fur and it goes abruptly still under her touch, the quick rot of necrotic damage spreading along its back and sides.

“I said knock it off!” Lup commands, striding forward. The woman balks, pulling back, where Barry is already waiting; calmly he smudges the circle with his foot and takes her by the elbows. 

“Don’t do anything foolish,” he says, mild, “and this will go better for you.”

Lup, soft touch that she is, goes immediately to crouch by the fallen animal. “You Vampiric Touched your _cat_?” she exclaims, disbelieving; every eye is drawn in her direction, including Taako’s.

He’s distracted for just a moment. They all are, tipsy and slow, but it only takes one moment for Barry to recoil with a pained curse, necrotic wounds creeping up the backs of his hands. The human woman cries out too, startled, her body crackling with more magic energy than she can handle. When Lup growls and lunges toward her, she lets it loose in a thick black beam that connects with Lup’s chest and knocks her flat on her back.

She doesn’t move.

Taako’s frozen for a moment of absolute, shattering panic. Then he scrambles toward his sister, pressing his fingers to the slow pulse in her wrist, his palm on her chest to feel her breathe. She _is_ breathing, but she doesn’t stir. 

In the next instant Kravitz is between them and the woman, his cloak billowing though there isn’t any wind, his scythe gleaming at her throat.

“Enough,” he says, low and icy cold; he holds out his other hand, a thick black book materializing in his grasp and flipping open on its own. “Teylin Asher. Consider this a warning. I know your name now, and I can see your soul; if you trespass on the laws of life and death again, I will show no mercy.” 

She gapes up at him, tilting her trembling chin up away from the blade. “It’s not _my_ cat,” she stutters, nonsensically, as though that matters. “It’s a stray. I just needed...I have to work.” She wraps her trembling arms around herself, her encased leg sprawled awkwardly. “I just needed to heal faster.”

Kravitz snaps the book shut. Even from behind, Taako can guess at his thunderous expression by the tense set of his shoulders. Then Davenport rises from where he’s been crouched over Barry’s injured hands, points his wand at her back and murmurs a spell, and the woman collapses backward, asleep.

Later, that’s all Taako will remember of the end of the fight, except for Lup’s limp body in his arms, her head propped gently in his lap. There’s a bustle around him that he barely registers; at some point Angus appears at his elbow, telling him a healer is on the way, and Barry gets planted at his other side. Local law enforcement must come and take the unconscious woman away, but it’s all on the periphery. Taako’s perception is narrowed down to his breath, too fast, and the tingling of his scalp and his fingertips. His eyes are glued to Lup’s closed ones, watching for the slightest flutter, and he’s suddenly, stupidly cold. When he starts to shiver, he feels Barry and Angus press in closer. 

“Hey,” Barry murmurs in his ear, sounding drained. “She’s okay. We’re okay. Deep breaths, bud.”

“Can’t,” he pants, an automatic denial, but slowly he starts to get his lungs back under his own control. Lup doesn’t _really_ look dead—there’s color in her face—and he can feel her breath under his hand, so he tries to match it.

He’s mostly succeeding by the time a young half-orc in the brown homespun of some kind of cleric hurries in. He sees to Barry first, with a quick barrage of spells—necromantic damage keeps spreading if it’s left too long—and the wounds recede, leaving chapped but healed skin behind. Then he turns to Lup, her head cradled in Taako’s lap. Taako must look about as friendly as he feels, because the cleric hesitates a moment before reaching out to take her pulse, lifting her eyelids to peer at her eyes. “What hit her?”

“Ray of Enfeeblement, I think,” Barry says, flexing his fingers. “A pretty powerful one.”

“Ah, that explains it,” the cleric says with a relieved breath. “She must just need a little power boost.” He presses a healing spell to her chest, hand beside Taako’s, and Lup sucks in a gasping breath like she’s been underwater. Backing off immediately, the cleric makes way for Barry, who leans in with a tired grin. Lup’s eyes pop open, startled, and find Barry’s first.

“Everyone’s okay,” he tells her. “It’s all sorted.”

“Fucking hell,” she replies, her voice strained. “Talk about embarrassing. I can’t believe we totally botched that in front of the _boss_.” Then she seems to take stock, and looks up at Taako. She’s smiling in the first moment, chagrined, apologetic. Then her face starts to fall as she takes him in, the sort of once-over that reveals every tell he doesn’t know he’s showing. If he looks anything like how he feels, then he looks like shit even through his glamour. She struggles upright, and he lets her go. “Taako?”

“You can’t do that,” is what comes out of his mouth. He’s speaking, but he doesn’t feel like he is; that’s another Taako, one that isn’t just bone-deep tired and scared. He lets that other Taako take over conversation and interaction and the surface of things. “You can’t fucking do that to me, ever again.”

Lup looks startled; her mouth is working like she’s keeping back her first response, and formulating a reply. Then a soft _mew?_ pops the bubble of sudden tension.

Between them, one paw stretched delicately to touch Lup’s leg, is the skeleton of a cat. It’s surrounded by wispy shadow, the suggestion of what its body used to be; when Taako looks over, its actual body is nearly disintegrated in the center of the rune circle.

With a soft clack of its jaw the cat mews again, both front paws up on Lup’s thigh now; its claw-tipped phalanges knead at her insistently. After a bewildered moment, Lup lightly rubs a finger along the underside of its jaw. “Hey,” she murmurs. “Hey little ghostie. You makin’ biscuits?”

“That’s...unusual,” says Kravitz, appearing at Taako’s side. “But...we’ve cleared things up as much as we can here, and this wasn’t even our assignment, so there’s no paperwork to be done.” His hand touches the back of Taako’s neck, cool and familiar. “Let me get you all home. It’s quite late.”

“What about Thorpe?” Angus asks around a yawn; he’s still pressed up against Taako’s side, trying and failing to look alert.

Davenport holds out a hand to pull Angus to his feet. “I walked him to his apartment upstairs.”

“Well, we’re definitely taking this sweetie with us,” Lup says in a voice that means she’s already charmed; the cat is now a pile of bones and shadow curled in her arms, rattling with a purr. Barry rises and pulls her up, and then Kravitz’s hand is under Taako’s arm to steady him; his legs feel like rubber, and he lets Kravitz take him around the waist and draw him close.

Then Krav’s scythe is in his hand, and a rift appears as he deftly swings. “One for you, Captain,” and Davenport nods.

“One of you call me tomorrow, all right?” he says, pinning them with a commanding look before stepping through. That rift closes, and Kravitz swiftly makes another in its place, the suite dark and quiet on the other side. 

Taako lets Kravitz shepherd him through. He says his goodnights to Angus and Barry in a haze; Lup catches his hand and squeezes it, kissing his cheek. When she pulls away, he has to focus to make his hand uncurl from around hers. He must look as bereft as he feels when she’s not touching him anymore, because she hesitates, then takes his hand again. “Let’s have a sleepover, huh?”

She keeps his hand as they fix up the bed with an Enlarge, as Kravitz takes his hat and prompts him to slip off his shoes, as Angus reappears in his pajamas. Soon Taako finds himself curled in the middle of a vast mattress, Kravitz close at his back and Angus tucked against his front. Across the lump of Angus under the covers, Lup is watching him, their hands still latched. Somewhere behind her Barry is already snoring, and the cat has found a place for itself by Angus’ feet. 

“Go to sleep,” Lup whispers, her thumb sweeping rhythmically across his knuckles. “You’re exhausted.”

He is. There’s no reason for him to be so exhausted, but he is. Still, he watches her until his eyes go crackly-dry, and when he blinks, sleep takes him.

***

He hasn’t been sleeping well, since he told Barry that everyone outside the seven of them was dust. Since Barry pretty heavily implied that he’s fucked up. Taako’s always known himself, his own limitations, but it never seemed to matter quite so much before. Lup is the one who cares about other people; he’s the one who looks after the two, now the seven, of them. Someone has to be the practical one, and if that’s fucked up then he’ll take it.

So he gets up at sunrise, goes to the galley to make the coffee. Lup’s been so down; he’ll make her pancakes. Food can’t fix everything, or even anything that’s plaguing them right now, but it’s still top priority in Looking After Number Ones.

The ship is quiet, but not middle-of-the-night sort of quiet. There’s a sense that the air is disturbed, like someone’s been and gone before him, before the sun. 

There’s a note on the table.

Somehow he knows it’s from Lup; somehow he knows he doesn’t want to read it. It sits there, white paper standing out on the dark wood table Magnus made to replace the unfriendly metal one they had when they first launched. He’s afraid to even go near it. Some ingrained response won’t let him move, like it’s a rattling snake warning him of the pain about to come. He tries to back away, and finds he can’t; the galley around him has disappeared, an empty darkness in its place that coalesces into the dripping walls of a cave. Then the table is gone, and the note is gripped in a skeletal hand, emerging from a tattered red sleeve; a slumped, robed figure tilts its head up to look at him, and holds the note out. Looking at it hurts his eyes, hurts his heart, a weight on his chest that makes it hard to breathe; his head is full of static, but he can’t bring himself to turn away. He squeezes his eyes closed.

When he opens them he’s in bed, in a room he knows is his, and a rattling purr makes him look down. There’s a skeleton cat on his chest, kneading at him with prickling claws. The cat is cold, but he can feel himself sweating, feel a moan trapped in his clenched throat. It’s been a little while since he had a night terror.

“Let’s call her Biscuit,” comes a voice at his side.

There’s a curled-up lump under the blankets beside him, just tufts of hair sticking out. _Angus_, he knows. And further over, he sees his own face.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” he asks his doppelganger; she reaches over and sweeps his hair away from his face, rubs the top of his twitching ear. _Lup_.

“Not on nights like this,” she tells him, like an admission of guilt. “Are you okay?”

“Night terror,” he croaks.

Lup suddenly looks like she might cry; he hates it. “Lucy told me about that. She thought maybe it was your subconscious trying to remember things, when you couldn’t. But you’re still getting them?”

“What the fuck does she know?” he says instead of answering, but takes Lup’s hand. That’s when he realizes that she’s got his other hand too, fingers still interlaced. He turns toward her, dislodging Biscuit, and tugs.

Carefully she climbs over Angus, who rolls into the warm empty space she leaves without waking, and wraps Taako up in her arms. “Get some more sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

“Your breath smells like pickles,” he tells her, but submits, closing his eyes and slowly sliding back under.

***

Angus’ model bond engine is almost finished. He’s been working on the tin Starblaster he made with Davenport all afternoon, using careful magic to solder hinges along the flattened bottom and meticulously painting the inside of it from memory. Just from the Story he saw and more stories he’s heard around the dinner table or when Taako and Magnus are drunk, he’s got belowdecks entirely mapped out and placed little red-robed figures in the rooms; two in the galley and one in the lab, one in her study and another with his plants, the largest one feeding Fisher and the smallest at the helm. 

Taako’s almost sad the real ship is gone, lost in their last desperate effort against the Hunger. He would’ve liked to show it to Angus, and to Kravitz. But he can’t be sad they won the fight, and he’s got a hundred years of memories of the second place he really called home, and that has to be enough.

While Angus is painting, Taako and Lup work on their parts of the engine. Together, of course; Lup hasn’t been out of earshot for more than twenty minutes in the last three days. He suspects Kravitz arranged for her to have some recovery time before getting called out again, because he and Barry have popped out for two bounties by themselves in the meantime. They haven’t talked about the Ham and Pickle, or Taako’s humiliating meltdown. They have surface conversations, about what to cook or listen to on the radio or whether Lup should dye her hair. The silences in between aren’t tense, like before Lup was back in her body; more like they’re both tired and sore, and trying not to overexert themselves.

After Taako’s transmuted a chunk of cloudy-white raw quartz into a layered four-inch ring, as per Angus’ meticulously detailed blueprint, he watches as Lup irradiates it with Evocation magic. He can feel it when it starts to work; a familiar little pull, a sensation like his attention is caught. Across the top of the casing of Angus’ tiny motor, there’s a groove just the width of the ring; when Angus balances it there, the ring starts to spin and softly glow, drawing strands of bond energy around the motor like thread around a bobbin. The motor whirs to life, and Angus looks at the two of them, beaming. “It worked!”

“Of course it _worked_,” Taako says, though he can’t repress a smile. “You’ve got the best scientists in the planar system checking your math.”

“Now I just have to attach the casing to the ship, and see if it’ll fly.”

“You’ll want to wait until that gorgeous paint job is dry,” Lup points out, and Angus blushes. “Let’s take a dinner break, huh?”

***

With Kravitz and Barry out on Reaper business, it’s just the three of them. They don’t even bother clearing the kitchen table, just slide Angus’ project to one end and set places at the other. They make macaroni and cheese; Taako lets Lup add bacon, Lup lets Taako add tomatoes, and they both give in to Angus’ earnest request for broccoli. It’s easy, fun. When the paint still isn’t dry after dinner, they curl up on the couch and the twins let Angus put Caleb Cleveland: The Musical Original Cast Recording on the record player. The kid is asleep before they even get to the B-side, and doesn’t stir when silence falls—first the staticky silence of the end of the recording, and then the deeper quiet after the tonearm lifts and swings back to its post.

Lup tugs the worn-out throw from the back of the couch and lays it over Angus, then gets to her feet. “Let’s attach the motor.”

“Without Angus?”

“We won’t turn it on. Just hook it up, do the soldering for him.”

Taako follows her, holding the ship steady and watching in silence as she twists wiring together, hooking the motor to the propeller at the back and the string of magilectric lights Angus has wound around the deck railing. 

“Listen,” she says, her eyes on her work, “pretty soon I have to go back to the Reaper thing.”

Taako blinks at her, turning the body of the ship to give her a better angle. “I mean...that’s your job now, so yeah, I assumed so.”

She pulls out her wand, and the tip glows with heat as she touches it to the motor casing. “I promise I’m gonna be careful. _More_ careful.”

“Lup,” Taako groans. “We don’t have to do this. I just overreacted. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, babe, Barry thought you were going to pass out.”

“Oh, did he add a medical degree to his collection when I wasn’t looking?”

“Don’t be a dick. I’m just trying to say that you don’t have to worry about me, everything’s gonna be fine.”

“I don’t _worry_ about you!” Taako’s voice is suddenly loud in the quiet room, and Lup flinches. Not _away_, like he startled her, but inward, like it hurt. His chest constricts. “I didn’t mean...of course I worry, the same amount I’ve always worried, you’re the other fucking half of my heart. You just, you looked _dead_, I freaked out, that’s how it’s gonna be. That’s never gonna be okay, I’m just _fucked up_ and going on with things, you don’t have to treat me like I’m broken.”

Lup pulls her wand away from the motor casing, now securely in place. She releases the spell that’s heating the tip and sets it down on the table with a soft, precise _click. _Then her face crumples like a paper bag and she covers it with her hands, and the choked whine that emerges might be the worst sound Taako has ever heard.

In the next instant she’s in his arms, her open mouth shoved against his shoulder to muffle her sobbing, and he _doesn’t know what’s happening._ All he can do is hang on as it breaks over her, hearing panic in her wailing like when they were kids and nothing ever felt safe. 

[ ](https://divinelark.tumblr.com/post/188620366171/image-description-a-digital-painting-of-taako)

In the eye of this storm she shifts against him, shaking. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, and he presses his cheek harder against her hair.

“It’s ok. Tell me what’s wrong, you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

Her voice is strangled and wet. “That’s what’s wrong. _I’m sorry. _I left you. I fucked you up.”

“Lup, no, no, you didn’t—”

“I was _selfish_,” she says over him, “and I knew if I told you where I was going you’d try to stop me, I was angry that you didn’t care. I made a stupid decision and I hurt you, and I hurt Barry. I can’t sleep, I just keep dreaming that you can’t hear me, that I can’t get to you, that you need me and I’m just _gone_.” Her sobbing now is helpless and tired, pitiful, and he curls his arms tighter around her.

“I forgive you,” he murmurs, “if that’s what you need to hear. I forgave you the first second I remembered you. It did hurt us when you disappeared, but it hurt you that I found you and didn’t know you, didn’t it?. It’s not...it doesn’t matter. Just _talk to me_, huh? You have to tell me when something’s bothering you. And I could do better at that too,” he admits. “Does Barry know you’re having nightmares?”

She takes a gulping breath and blows it out into his shoulder, then nods. “He thinks I should talk to someone. I mean. A professional.”

_Then let’s go together_, he wants to say, but he can’t push the words past his teeth. “Then I guess he hasn’t gotten a psychology degree in the last decade, either.”

“_Taako_.”

He rocks them a little, feeling drained and jittery at once. “Hey. We’re gonna be okay, right? We’re gonna be okay.”

Lup doesn’t answer, but he can feel her relax, inch by inch.

***

The last morning of break, Taako makes challah French toast. It’s Angus’ favorite, but the kid kindly doesn’t point that out, just loads his plate and drenches it in syrup. Lup comes down to the suite looking genuinely rested (and now that Taako knows about the nightmares, he can spot the difference), and Barry hums atonally while he chews. Only Kravitz doesn’t eat—“It’s not conducive to whistling, love”—so Angus and Lup split the extra slice.

Magnus is ten minutes late. Everyone’s fed and dressed and ready by the time he shows, a long paper-wrapped package strapped to his back and a grin on his face. “What’s everybody standing around for?” he has the audacity to say. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

They step through a rift in a chattering jumble, straight onto the walk in front of Taako’s new door. Or rather, where the door will be, when they put it in; now there’s just a huge stone archway looking into the exposed boards and unpainted walls of the interior. Flanking the walk are two swathes of bare earth, muddled with footprints and the tracks and drag marks of construction machinery, waiting for Merle to bring it to life. That’s a task for another day, though; today, two imposing wooden doors and a wide half-circle window are propped against the outer wall, and a wooden frame in the shape of the arch is laid out flat on a board across two sawhorses.

Knack is already there, and they scowl in greeting. “You’re late.”

“At least I’m consistent,” Taako replies with a grin, just to ruffle the tiefling’s metaphorical feathers. It works, and it doesn’t; they’re comfortable with each other now. Knack is, as Auntie would say, good people.

They sigh. “So where’s this special transom? The crew’s waiting on it to get the doors installed.”

“I’ve got it!” Magnus volunteers, chipper as fucking always. He holds out a hand. “Hail and well met.”

Knack shakes his hand with a neutral expression, then unwraps the wooden beam Magnus unstraps from his back. It’s straight and solid-looking, precise edges, and Taako’s sure it’s exactly to the measurements Knack gave him weeks ago. The key feature, though, is the carved front side. A branch stretches the length of the beam in relief, shockingly lifelike, and perched along its knots and angles are round little songbirds. Nine of them.

Taako _asked_ for the birds. For _some _birds. He didn’t specify how many. He’s finally learning to do math here, but that was math he didn’t want to think too hard about. Five birds, for the five of them living there? That would mean leaving out Magnus, and Merle, and Davenport. Seven birds, like the whole world calls them? That’s leaving out his boyfriend, and his...Angus, and he can’t even touch the hot coal of whether he wants the Director on there or not. What it would mean to exclude her, after everything; what it would mean to leave her in.

So he let Magnus decide, and of course Magnus went overboard. Taako reaches out to trace their shapes, trying to figure out what emotion it is that’s making his eyes sting.

“Beautiful work,” Knack says, admiration in their voice; Magnus scratches the back of his head, charmingly humble, then gestures around to the house and the buildings of the school rising beyond it. 

“I mean, not much compared to all this! But thanks.”

Taako lays both hands on the wood. He hasn’t put any spells on it yet, he thought none of them had, but there’s a little prickle of magic under his fingers. It feels...unyielding. Protective. Definitely Abjuration, and it leaves a floral taste on the back of his tongue that he’d know anywhere. So that’s why Magnus was late. He squeezes his eyes shut hard for a moment, then pulls his hands back. “Well, what are we waiting for, let’s get spelling so these good people can get on with their manual labor.”

Magnus grips his shoulder with a grin. He seems to be able to read more on Taako’s face than Taako can read inside his own mind. It’s fucking annoying.

Knack holds the beam out like it’s as light as Taako’s umbrella, and Kravitz steps up beside it. “I’ll get it started,” he says, and lays his hand on the edge of the beam. Then he whistles, indecently skillfully, a bit of classical music Taako recognizes—Kravitz has hummed it, played it when Lup lent him her violin. Taako should ask about it. He doesn’t even know what it’s called, or why Kravitz is choosing it, and he suddenly feels like he’s been missing opportunities. 

But it’s delightful to watch Kravitz, anyway. He almost never uses bardic magic, not when he’s got Reaper powers to bring to bear on things, and he doesn’t waste spell slots left and right the way Taako does. He’s beautiful like this, music and light seeming to fill him up, spilling out of him and into the beam. Then he pauses, and the carved birds along the branch open their little beaks and repeat his song. “There we go,” Kravitz says with a satisfied smile. “Who’s next?”

One by one they step forward, hum or sing a snippet of music, press their hands to the beam while Kravitz whistles their songs into the spell. It will recognize them from now on, and grant them entry, and announce them as they come. Angus chooses a Caleb Cleveland: The Musical song, which makes Kravitz laugh; Magnus uses the seven notes of the message Fisher tried so long to pass on to them, because he’s _Magnus._ For Barry it’s the opening of his duet with Lup, from the conservatory, and Lup kisses him when he’s done before making her own unavoidable choice: the Thong Song.

When all of their songs are recorded, the beam radiating magic, Taako steps up to lay his hands on it again. He can feel them all in the touch, and the almost staticky energy of strong bonds in close proximity, and underneath it the low, familiar hum of Abjuration magic. “You’re sure we can add people, after it’s mounted? Ren, and whoever?”

“Absolutely,” Kravitz replies with a pleased smile. “I mean, we’ll probably need a stepladder, but yes.”

“Good.” Taako drops his shoulders, loosens up the tight places in his chest. Remembers the train in Rockport, the crystallizing lab, a hundred years of memories before those and the first memory, the first moment he understood that there was a whole separate person existing in the world with him, not just a wonderful extension of himself. He lets those bonds swell up in his chest, and then he softly hums a tune, slow and sweet; a lullaby he only barely remembers, but centuries later it’s still lingering in his scrambled brain. 

Behind him, Lup gives a soft coo. “Koko,” she says, in that voice that means she’s cataloging this moment of softness to hold over him later when he’s trying to be cool. He lets her have it; he’s rich now, he can afford a little softness.

Kravitz smiles tenderly and whistles the tune back, his magic twining with Taako’s, riding along the grain of the wood. Then the carved birds repeat the song again, and the magic is done.

With a slightly more somber air than usual, Knack carries the enchanted beam over to the wooden frame, fits it into place just where the inward curve of the arch begins. It fits perfectly; the crew scattered around them burst into applause, until Knack scowls around and they leap into action with drills and screws and caulk.

Mangus’ meaty hand lands on Taako’s shoulder again, and Taako touches the back of it lightly with his fingertips. “Thanks,” he says softly, in Elvish, just so less people will hear. “It’s perfect.”

He can _feel_ Magnus grinning without even looking at him. “I’ll pass that on.”


	5. Epilogue (Finals Week)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are at the end of this fic. Thanks to the folks who have been following along, and welcome to the folks who wait to read things until they're fully posted! And once again, huge thanks to my talented artist partners and to The Adventure Bang 2019 for providing the accountability I needed to actually finish this story, which I started writing TWO YEARS AGO.

Merle carries one single duffel bag through the extra-wide rift Kravitz opened, drops it in the hall, and spends the whole time the rest of them are lugging or levitating boxes fussing in the front garden, muttering about how it’s already nearly summer and he should have had these seeds in the ground sooner. “And keep them watered, Taako!” he grouses as he gives a willowy little sapling a boost of magic.

“Ask Pan for a little rain then, it’s hot as balls,” Taako shouts back through the open door. Then Magnus trundles a trunk through the rift, glowing with sweat and looking delighted. 

“How about this one?” 

“That’s mine!” Angus pipes from down the hall. “This way!”

Taako’s unpacking the front kitchen—the one for catering, and guests—because he’s already done the real kitchen in the family wing and needs a new reason not to carry anything. Most of it is new equipment and cookware he’s had delivered, decent quality and low cost, as placeholders until he has time to launch his own cookware line. It’s all serviceable, shiny and not-yet-loved as he tucks pots and pans and trays away into the cabinets and gleaming new knives into the block.

Lup pokes her head in, on her way from their other moving rift in Barry’s creepy cave to the basement. “There’s plenty left to carry, you know.”

Taako waves his hand, and the wooden spoon he’s holding in it. “It makes Magnus happy, I won’t deprive him.”

It takes the bulk of the day, innumerable spell slots, and lots of delivery pizza, but eventually everything is moved in and a decent chunk of it is unpacked. Magnus, who did most of the lifting including several pieces of heavy, hand-made furniture, is sent to the guest bathroom to shower and offered a bedroom to crash in. Upstairs, Taako and Lup debate over how to organize their shared dressing room, moving hangers this way and that with a steady stream of banter; the doors to their respective rooms are standing open, where Kravitz and Barry are wisely staying out of the discussion and enjoying their own quiet bedtime rituals. 

Angus, already in his pajamas, is sitting with his knees pulled up to his chin in Taako’s vanity chair, watching the closet sparring progress. “But how are you going to organize by _weather?_” Taako insists, as Lup shifts some more clothes around. “What about a summer dress you can wear in fall with a sweater? What about a light jacket you can layer under a coat??” 

Lup snorts. “Taako, you’re getting bent out of shape over nothing. You organize your way, I’ll organize my way, and when you borrow things you’ll put them back where you found them or I’ll send you to the Stockade.”

“Well, ditto for you,” Taako says, giving in and sliding an eggplant-colored blouse in next to a pair of slightly redder trousers. 

“You’re not a Reaper, dingus.”

“Yeah, but my boyfriend’s _your boss_.”

“Please don’t drag me into this,” Kravitz calls from the bedroom. “And do leave me at least a little bit of space, darling, I have a few corporeal suits to hang.”

“At least you hang your clothes,” Taako says, louder. “Unlike some people whose entire wardrobe is nerdy graphic tees and jeans.”

“I’m a simple man, bud,” Barry calls from the other side.

Lup grins, besotted even after more than a century. “I’ll get him a nice sport coat before Carey and Killian’s wedding.”

“As long as it’s not denim,” Taako replies, putting away a pair of velvety green boots. 

“Maybe a nice tweed,” Angus adds, arms wrapped around his legs. 

Taako sighs, but smiles at him. “You picked out what you’re wearing tomorrow?”

The kid just nods, chin digging into his knees.

“Nervous?”

“A little.”

“Aww, you’re gonna kick ass, little man,” Lup assures, swooping in to hug him; Angus giggles. 

“I hope so. It’s in the big lecture hall and everything, and I’m the first presentation in the class.”

Taako arranges a dark blue hat spangled with silver stars on an upper shelf, then turns back to Angus with hands on his hips. “It’s the rest of those kids who should be worried, having to present after you. Trust a seasoned performer, Ango, you’re gonna blow them out of the water.”

Angus smiles, leaning into Lup with his head resting on her hip. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Now shouldn’t tiny children be in bed?”

“I’m almost twelve, sir,” Angus replies with delight, but he hops to his feet to hug Lup and then Taako, calling a round of goodnights as he disappears down the hall to his room. Then, from the hallway: “I LOVE MY ROOM!”

“GO TO BED!” Taako yells back, but he can’t help the smile spreading across his face.

***

Angus McDonald, at his most formal in a tan tweed jacket and vest and a kilt of green and blue and red tartan, clears his throat and addresses the class. “We all now know that bond science originated in another planar system, on the homeworld of the Seven Birds. We know that the catalyst for this study was the Light of Creation, dropped into their world by accident. With that knowledge but without the Light to examine, the scientists of Faerun have slowly begun the study of bonds in our world, how they function, and how they can be harnessed for clean, renewable energy. I have taken up that study for this project, in an effort to produce a working model of bond energy for power.

“But before we come to that,” he says with a dramatic pause, “We must first address the most basic of questions. What is bond energy? And to understand that, we must ask: What is the Light of Creation?”

He turns to the chalkboard, draws a wavy circle with rays of light radiating from it. “Based on recreations of research and theory by Drs. Lup Taaco and Barry Bluejeans published only recently on our plane, the Light of Creation is a singular phenomenon consisting of an inextricably-bound collection of millions upon millions of microscopic bacteria.” He pauses again to let that land, and draws a few tiny dots within the wavy circle of the Light on the chalkboard. “These bacteria were unlike anything that had ever been studied on that world, clearly alien in origin; as a collective, the bacteria sustained itself by drawing in other microscopic organisms of all kinds from the surroundings to consume them for fuel and, by a process still not entirely understood, creating an extremely powerful communal electromagnetic field used for bacterial communication. This bioelectromagnetic system is the base of all current bond science.”

Lup leans over to Taako, murmuring in his ear. “Look at Lucas.”

When Taako casually glances over, Lucas already looks mildly gobsmacked; he’s alternating between staring at Angus like he’s never read a paper on this subject in his life—and he’s grading this presentation, so Taako very much hopes he _has_—and scribbling furious notes. Taako turns back to Lup with a sharp smile on his face. “I’d say Angus should have his job, but if the kid teaches anywhere it’s gonna be _my_ school.”

“All living creatures produce electromagnetic fields,” Angus is continuing, “though generally they are very weak. What scientist discovered when studying the Light and the way its organisms communicated through this field, is that the common healthy bacteria we all carry in our bodies _also_ communicate this way.” With a different color of chalk, Angus draws a few crude figures on the board beside the Light. “Of course our own bacteria have no sentience, the way the Light is suspected to, but they do interact through our EM fields, passing back and forth, a sort of foreign exchange. These exchanges bring individuals’ EM fields into contact as well, something previously thought impossible but in fact simply not measurable.” Now Angus draws wavy lines radiating from each figure, that cross and intersect with other figures’ lines.

“These EM field interactions produce photons—which, in large quantities such as the example of the Light, produce, well, light—and the extra photons bouncing around knock loose electrons and magitrons, producing magilectrical power. Again, on an individual basis and not the extreme example of the Light, these interactions are generally so small and few as to be insignificant. But within the highly-concentrated Light, billions of these interactions are happening constantly, putting off incredible levels of magilectrical power. While the Light’s EM field draws beings in—its so-called craveability factor—” 

Down the row from Taako, Magnus whoops.

Angus grins, but continues on, “the magilectrical output has all kinds of effects on those drawn in, resulting in bursts of generative, creative energy, and in some cases, physical growth and mutation. But again, this example is extreme, and as far as we know, unique. The magilectrical energy created by regular individuals’ interacting EM fields, called _bond energy_, and the mycorrhizal networks these reactions travel along created by the interacting bacteria, the bonds themselves, in most cases have very little effect. Of course, bonds are logically stronger between individuals who spend more time together, resulting in more frequent and more streamlined bacterial exchange. Any two people also have between them _bond potential_, which can be measured by testing the rate of bacterial exchange, though it’s still unknown _why_ some individuals have stronger bond potential than others, in varying combinations.

“However!” He turns back to the crowd in the lecture hall with a bright smile and brighter eyes. “With the proper equipment and magical skill, strong bond energy can be collected, broken down into its component particles, and converted to power!”

Now, at last, Angus unveils the covered shape on the table at the front of the room, pulling the heavy dark cloth off of it with a flourish to reveal his model Starblaster.

It’s sleek, and flashily painted with silver on the outside, a delicate wire railing around the deck and sides curved like a bullet. Behind the deck rises the bridge, painted windows all along its front and sides extending to the back of the ship, and below that back edge sits the gleaming propellor. 

The ship’s belly flattens out at the bottom, a landing surface that rests on the table until Angus reaches over and lifts it, a length of cord uncurling from the bottom as he does. Then he unclips a clasp at the top of the bridge and swings half of the model open and down on hinges built into the bottom. His painted cross-section inside is revealed, red-robed figures going about their tasks; more important though is the engine room spanning the bridge and lower level, motor and wires and a switch at the bottom, and the ring of quartz crystal balanced atop the motor casing, already slowly spinning and faintly glowing.

There’s an intake of breath around the room, a swell of gasps and murmurs; when Taako glances over again, Lucas looks well and truly shocked, like he didn’t expect Angus’ project to come this far. But then, Lucas is a complete dimwit. Looking in either direction down the back row, where Taako and Lup and the rest of Angus’ family are seated, shows a host of more intelligent expressions; Kravitz has seen the model in testing, as has Davenport beside him, but Merle and Mavis and Killian and Carey on the end all look suitably impressed. On the other side, past Lup, Barry is grinning with a surprisingly watery look in his eyes; Magnus beside him is just as bad. Next to Magnus sits Lucretia—or, today, The Director—in her most somber robes, looking utterly cool and unaccountably proud. Taako settles back in his seat with a tiny scowl, folding his hands in his lap and tapping his thumbs until Kravitz reaches over to take his hand.

“He’s done a beautiful job on it,” Kravitz murmurs to him, leaning over to press their shoulders together. “I love the little hat he painted on you.”

“Kid’s talented as fuck,” Taako agrees, relaxing and letting Kravitz lace their fingers together.

“As you can see,” Angus is saying, gesturing to the spinning ring, “this ring, transmuted from quartz and coated with Evocation magic, is already reacting to bond energy in this room. Given the size of the model, probably only my own and the first few rows here.” He gestures to his classmates, sitting at the front of the hall. “The Evocation spells, the details of which can be found in my written report, manipulate the bond energy that comes in contact with the ring, breaking up reacting particles and sending them where the engine needs them. Magitrons get used as fuel to power the spells; photons are released as light; electrons, the most crucial, are collected and converted into power. This switch turns on the power flow to the motor, which powers the propellor, which gives the ship forward thrust.

“Of course the actual Starblaster was on a much larger scale, with much more complicated machinery for maneuverability and speed, and further spells making use of the released magitrons. Spells to make the ship lighter, to protect against the vacuum of space, and so on.

“But this model uses those same principles. To help me demonstrate, if my two volunteers could come to the front of the room?”

Taako and Lup stand, grinning at each other, then climb over their families to exit at opposite ends of the back row where they’ve been seated. Walking in step as easily as breathing, they descend down the two aisles at the sides of the hall, and as they approach the glow of the spinning ring brightens. Angus grins at them in turn as they come, and they pause at the bottom, on either side of him.

“Clearly there’s very strong bond energy to be had between these two volunteers,” Angus says, and the whole room chuckles—there isn’t a soul here who doesn’t know who they are. “This is measurable with the proper instruments, but also visible in the speed and brightness of the engine ring. Now if you would both stand together?” he says, gesturing; Lup crosses the front of the room with a grin and a wave for the audience, then stands beside Taako and takes his hand. The ring is spinning hard now, whirring madly and glowing so bright that Angus has to close one eye and squint. “Who’d like to see what happens when I connect the ring and the motor?”

There’s a flurry of raised hands and a chorus of “me!” from the students, and of course, at the back, Magnus. Angus laughs; then he wraps the end of the silky cord a few times around his hand, and flips the switch.

Immediately the propellor whirs to life and the string of lights comes on around the deck; holding on with a white-fingered grip, he closes it up and latches the top, and when he lets it go the model shoots into the air. For a moment it tugs at the cord like an eager dog at the leash, and Angus grips with both hands like flying a kite; then he grins and pulls a little, and the nose of the ship turns. With a few clever manipulations, he has it flying in a wide circle in the air above his head as the audience erupts into applause.

He lets it circle for a little while for the awed crowd, then nods to the twins. Together they come behind him, pulling at the cord hand over hand until the little ship is whirring away in their grasp. Taako unclasps the top to open it again, and Angus reaches in to hit the switch. The ring still spins and glows, but the propellor slows to a stop and the whir of the motor dies. 

Angus clears his throat into the relative quiet that follows. “And that’s...that’s my presentation,” he says, laying the open model back down on the table. The audience bursts into applause once again; Angus grins up at Taako, relieved. Taako grins back, then glances to Lup on Angus’ other side. Together they take his hands, and the ring of the bond engine glows even brighter as they bow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on tumblr at a-big-apple!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at a-big-apple. :)


End file.
